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When First the Marriage Knot was Ty'd (Posted on 2004-12-02) Difficulty: 1 of 5

This riddle comes from a book entitled "The American Tutor's Assistant", dated 1791.

When first the marriage knot was ty’d
Between my wife and me,
My age was to that of my bride
As three times three to three
But now when ten and half ten years,
We man and wife have been,
Her age to mine exactly bears,
As eight is to sixteen;
Now tell, I pray, from what I’ve said,
What were our ages when we wed?

See The Solution Submitted by Erik O.    
Rating: 4.1111 (9 votes)

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re: A slightly different approach | Comment 23 of 24 |
(In reply to A slightly different approach by K Sengupta)

You had the right method, but you did it backwards.  The man is 3 times as old as the wife when they are first married and then 15 years later he is only 2 times as old.  So the equations would be:  (x being the man and y being the wife)

x=3y

x+15= 2(y+30)

So you subsitute 3y in for x, simplify, and you get y=15 which is the wife's age.  Then you just plug 15 back into x=3y and you get the man's age, which is 45.

Your answer of 15 for the man and 30 for the wife does not make sense for a couple reasons.  First of all the man is supposed to be the older of the two.  But even if you switched them and you add 15 to both ages, like the riddle implies, you would get 30 and 45.  And 45 is not twice as much as 30 which it needs to be in order to be a solution. 

So the wife starts out at age 15 when they are married and the man starts out at age 45.  45 is three times as much as 15 so that satisfies the first condition.  After adding 15 to both numbers, you get the wife's age as 30 and the man's at 60.  And 60 is twice as much as 30, which satisfies the second condition.


  Posted by shocked on 2007-06-28 08:52:40
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