A man asks his father about his age.

Instead of giving a direct answer the father wrote down two positive integer numbers on a piece of paper and says:

- Sum these two numbers and evaluate the square root of the total. Doing this, you´ll get my age.

The son takes his pocket calculator and inadvertently types the two numbers, one after the other, without pressing the "+" button (e.g. if the numbers were 124 and 357, he types 124357, instead of the sum of the numbers).

After this he makes a second mistake by pressing the square root button, not once, but twice.

Finding an integer number as the result he shows it to his father:

- This is your age.

- No, you´re wrong, but the number you found is precisely the age of your mother, who is older than me.

How old is the father?

Note: While a solution is trivial with the aid of a spreadsheet, can you derive it without one?

(In reply to Apologies by ed bottemiller)

It´s ok to me, ed.

The note I put in the problem to see if you one can find an analytical method to solve this problem, what I didn´t (I solved using a spreadsheet).

I thought somebody was trying yet. 

Posted by pcbouhid on 2008-08-06 21:56:28