Determine the present ages of each of the three siblings Toby, Julie and Melanie from the following clues:
- 10 years from now Toby will be twice as old as Julie was when Melanie was 9 times as old as Toby.
- 8 years ago, Melanie was half as old as Julie will be when Julie is 1 year older than Toby will be at the time when Melanie will be 5 times as old as Toby will be 2 years from now.
- When Toby was 1 year old, Melanie was 3 years older than Toby will be when Julie is 3 times as old as Melanie was 6 years before the time when Julie was half as old as Toby will be when Melanie will be 10 years older than Melanie was when Julie was one-third as old as Toby will be when Melanie will be 3 times as old as she was when Julie was born.
"when Melanie was 9 times as old as Toby"
I took "when" here to mean: the same year in which M was 9 times as old as T, not the year in which M was 9 times as old as T is now.
So I wrote:
M-P = 9(T-P)
where P is the number of years ago this 9-times age difference occurred.
I think perhaps Charlie interprets the statement differently, using T's current age: M-P = 9T
But this only means that we are getting solutions for different problems.
I have also gone back and fixed one error I found in my first post,
which changes the answer, but doesn't yet get a reasonable result.
Currently I have negative P and F values (negative years) and a negative age for T, all of which are nonsensical. - Checking further...
Edited on January 9, 2022, 11:57 am
different takes wrt the 1st statement
