Brain Out Level 159
📝 Walkthrough
Overview
A simple family riddle: the old lady has seven sons, and each son has a sister, and the question asks for the total number of children. The trap is to add a separate sister for every son, but the siblings share one sister, so the count stays small. The correct total is 8.
The family statement says seven sons and a sister for each, but the sister in one family is a single person relative to all her brothers.
- Difficulty: Easy
- Estimated moves: 1
Step-by-Step Solution
- Read the family statement carefully: seven sons, and each son has a sister.
- Realize the sister is shared by all seven sons. The same girl is the sister of every brother, so she is not seven separate children.
- Add the seven sons to the one shared sister, giving seven plus one.
- Enter 8 in the answer field.
- Confirm the total. The level accepts 8 once the shared sister is counted only once.
Recognize that the one daughter is shared across all seven sons, so she counts once rather than once per brother. Add the seven sons to that one shared sister to get seven plus one, and enter 8 in the field. Confirm the total after the shared sister has been counted only once. If your number grows by seven extra sisters, you have treated each brother as having a separate sibling, which the family wording does not mean.
Picture the family as one set of brothers and one daughter: the sister is the same person relative to every son, so her name appears once in the household count. Write 8 as the answer, and if your field entry grows larger, check whether you duplicated the sister for each brother, which is the over-counting trap in the wording.
Do not be misled by the phrase each son has a sister; it describes one shared sister applied to every brother, not a separate daughter born for each one. Once you keep that single sister in mind, the family count stays at eight children, and entering anything larger repeats the same counting mistake the riddle sets up.
Strategy & Reasoning
The wording makes it sound as if each son brings his own sister, which would inflate the count, but a sister in a family is one person relative to all brothers. This shared-relation trick is common in Brain Out riddles: a single daughter satisfies the condition for every son. Counting the children once, seven boys and one girl, gives the family size 8 rather than any repeated-sister total. This shared-relation riddle exploits wording that sounds like one sister per son, but siblings belong to the same family together. Counting the children once, seven boys and one girl, gives 8, and repeating the sister for each son would overstate the family size the way the trap intends.
Tips & Common Mistakes
- Count the sister only once; she belongs to all seven brothers together.
- Do not add seven sisters, one per son, because the siblings share a single girl.
- The answer is 8: seven sons plus the one shared sister.