08: Strawberry ice cream [***]

Wes Carroll's Puzzler

A friend of mine has pictures of his three daughters on his mantle. He took the pictures when each of the girls was a particularly adorable age — the same age for all three of them, as it happens. Unfortunately, this made it impossible for me to determine which was the oldest. So I had to ask him. Since my friend is a puzzle junkie, however, he declined to answer directly, telling me only that the product of their current ages was 72. “However,” he added, “since that isn’t enough information to determine their ages, I’ll also tell you that the sum of their ages happens also to be the number of our street address.” (Of course, I understood that each daughter’s age was to be considered a whole number for purposes of this puzzle.) I darted outside to check the number on his mailbox. I was daunted to discover that I still didn’t have enough information to determine their ages, and I returned to tell him so. “That is an astute observation,” he said, smiling. “So you’ll be glad to know that my oldest daughter prefers strawberry ice cream.” Finally! I knew their ages. Do you? // Spiciness: *** out of ****