A man said, “This girl is the wife of the grandson of my mother”. How is the…

2024

A man said, “This girl is the wife of the grandson of my mother”. How is the man related to the girl?

  1. A.

    Father

  2. B.

    Grandfather

  3. C.

    Husband

  4. D.

    Father-in-law

Attempted by 2 students.

Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: D

Concept

In blood-relation puzzles, translate a chained description into a family-tree term by counting generations from a common reference person, then apply the standard label — a man is the father-in-law of the person who marries his own son or daughter. A two-step chain such as “grandson of my mother” collapses to a single relation: since the speaker is one generation below his mother, his mother's grandson is one generation below the speaker himself — that is, the speaker's own son, because the statement mentions no sibling of the speaker who could supply an alternative grandson.

Application

  1. The man is a son of his own mother — one generation below her, and no sibling of his is mentioned who could also produce a grandson of hers.

  2. So “the grandson of his mother” must be two generations below his mother, i.e. one generation below the man himself — this position is the man's own son.

  3. The girl is stated to be the wife of that son, so she is the man's daughter-in-law.

  4. The father of the girl's husband — the man himself — is, by definition, her father-in-law.

Cross-check

Reading the family tree top-down — the mother, then the man, then the man's son, then the son's wife (the girl) — confirms the same chain: the man is connected to the girl only through his son's marriage, which is exactly the father-in-law relation.

Result

The man is the girl's father-in-law.

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