Introducing a lady, a man says, “She is the daughter of the man who is the…
2024
Introducing a lady, a man says, “She is the daughter of the man who is the father of the wife of my father.” How is the lady related to the man?
- A.
Sister
- B.
Cousin
- C.
Mother
- D.
Wife
Attempted by 4 students.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: C
Concept: In a blood-relation puzzle, resolve an indirect description one family link at a time -- substitute each family term for the actual person it names, working from the innermost relation outward. Where the resulting relation could in principle match more than one real person, check which of the given answer options is actually consistent with it; usually only one is.
Application: Resolve the chain in this description step by step.
The wife of the man's father is the man's own mother.
The father of that person (the wife of the man's father) is the father of the man's mother, i.e. the man's maternal grandfather.
The lady is described as a daughter of this maternal grandfather.
A daughter of the maternal grandfather could be the man's mother or one of her sisters, but among the four given relations (Sister, Cousin, Mother, Wife) only Mother describes a daughter of the maternal grandfather at all, so Mother is the relation the description points to.
Cross-check: Checking in reverse -- the man's mother is indeed the wife of his father, her own father is indeed his maternal grandfather, and she is indeed a daughter of that grandfather -- so every link of the chain is consistent with Mother, and none of the other three options describes a daughter of the maternal grandfather at all.
Result: Therefore, the lady is the man's Mother.