Jennifer is 21 years older than her son Douglas. 6 years from now, Jennifer will be 5 times as old as Douglas.
Question: Where is Jennifer's husband most likely to be right now?
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Sign up to join this communityJennifer is 21 years older than her son Douglas. 6 years from now, Jennifer will be 5 times as old as Douglas.
Question: Where is Jennifer's husband most likely to be right now?
Let's define $J$=Jennifer and $D$=Douglas.
The problem can be rewritten as:
$J=D+21$
$J+6=5(D+6)$
According to my math, Douglas is $D=(-\frac{3}{4})$ years old, which means $-9$ months. Pregnancy lasts for nine months, so Jennifer's husband is in the bed with her right now.
Jennifer's husband is busy in business meetings, while Douglas's dad is with Jennifer.
As mentioned in leoll2's answer above, the Maths part of the question is the simultaneous solution of the two equations which relate the respective ages of Jennifer and Douglas:
$$J=D+21$$ $$J+6=5(D+6)$$
These provide the answer $D = -3/4$ years, or roughly $-9$ months, which could lead one to conclude what leoll2 concluded.
However,
1) It is not necessary that Jennifer's husband must have necessarily fathered Douglas. (No offence meant, I only mean it is not specified in the puzzle.)
2) Biologically, pregnancy doesn't always have to last 9 months. So, one can not deny the possibility of Douglas being born after 8 and a half months instead of nine.
So, Jennifer's husband could be anywhere in this world, or could even be dead. Particularly, if he hasn't fathered Douglas, and pregnancy did last exactly 9 months, then he must not be around at the time of conceiving (stark opposite conclusion from the same data).
This is not a well designed puzzle. Sorry for being a killjoy :(