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In a family of eight persons - P, Q, R, S, T, U, V and W - there are four males and four females. There are three married couples and two persons are unmarried. Each of them reads a different magazine, viz India Today (R), India Today (H), Outlook (E), Outlook (H), Frontline, The Week, Businessworld and Sportsstar. No couple reads both the versions of the same magazine.

In the family of two generations, each male member except W has two brothers and one sister.

  • V is the mother-in-law of R and who reads India Today (H).
  • Q, who reads Outlook (E), is the daughter-in-law of W.
  • T, who reads Frontline, is the unmarried brother of U, who does not read Businessworld.
  • No female reads Outlook (H) or The Week.
  • S is the brother-in-law of R but he does not read Businessworld, Sportsstar or The Week.
  • P does not read The Week.
  • W has no son-in-law.
  • U is Q's sister-in-law.

This is taken from the book, "Magical book on puzzles" by K Kundan.

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    $\begingroup$ Does this puzzle assume that all married couples include one male and one female? $\endgroup$
    – shoover
    Jul 27, 2021 at 19:16
  • $\begingroup$ Yes all married couples include one male and one female $\endgroup$
    – user75346
    Jul 28, 2021 at 1:03

1 Answer 1

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First, let us determine the relations.
We know that 3 of the 4 male members (the remaining 4th being W) are brothers of each other (otherwise they could not have 2 brothers each). One of them is T (we know that T is male because he is U's brother), and now we know that U is the only sister of the three. Who are T's other 2 brothers?
Obviously neither of U, V and Q, since all of them are female. S is one of them since both remaining male members of the family (apart from T and W) should be T's brothers. But R cannot be T's brother since S is brother-in-law (not the blood brother) of R. So, the 3rd (remaining) brother is P.
So, P, S and T are brothers, and U is their only sister. Since S is the brother-in-law of R, then R (being female) must be married to one of the S's brothers. It must be P since T is unmarried.
Since V is the mother-in-law of R, she must be the mother of P,S,T and U. U is Q's sister-in-law, that is, Q is married to U's brother, namely S (since T is unmarried, and P is married to R). Q is W's daughter-in-law, so W must be V's husband.
Final tree (sorry for the crude drawing, males are squares, females are circles):
enter image description here
Now, let us proceed to the newspapers. First, we know that R reads India Today (H) (since V is R's and Q's mother-in-law, and Q reads other newspaper), Q reads Outlook (E), and T reads Frontline. S does not read Businessworld, Sportsstar or The Week, so he must read either India Today (R) or Outlook (H). But S is Q's husband who also reads Outlook, so S must read India Today (R).
The Week and Outlook (H) are read by male members, that is, P and W (since S and T read something other). P does not read The Week, so he reads Outlook (H), and W reads The Week. U does not read Businessworld, so she must read Sportsstar, the only remaining newspaper. And Businessworld should remain to V.
Final answer (apart from the family tree):
P reads Outlook (H),
Q reads Outlook (E),
R reads India Today (H),
S reads India Today (R),
T reads Frontline,
U reads Sportsstar,
V reads Businessworld,
W reads The Week.

Note:

The clause "V is the mother-in-law of R and who reads India Today (H)" is interpreted as if R and one who reads India Today (H) could be the same person (and in fact, it is). If we assume that these must be different persons, we get a contradiction.

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