15 or 18 both seem possible. The intended answer seems to be 15
None of their ages can be a prime number or power of prime, since then every other daughter must have a multiple of that prime, and so the sum will be divisible by it.
Thus each age must the product of two different primes. The 20 year limit means that these primes must be 2, 3, and 5. At least one of these factors must be absent from one of the ages, so a 3 x 5 = 15 age must exist (and so 7 would be too big). The set of possible ages are 6, 10, 12, 15, and 18, meaning the eldest might be 15 or 18.
From here, we must use the knowledge that the sum uniquely determines who is the eldest. The largest possibleI don't see any particularly clever way of doing this, but a computer search shows that there are 5 valid sumcombinations of ages, as listed in Laska's answer. Those for which the eldest is 18 are (10, 10, 15, 1518, 18) and (10, 15, 18, yielding 73. It is clearly impossible to achieve this without the18, 18). But alasFor the others, a unique sum can also be found with 15 as the eldest is 15. 6, 6
From there, 10we have to assume the poster lives somewhere where adoption is illegal, 10everyone is monogamous, 15 yields a sumpregnancies can't occur within 4 months of 47. I'll check with a computer when the opportunity arisesbirth, but this also seems uniqueand twins, triplets, etc are never dissociated by birth order. In that case, the 18 situation is ruled out.