The Sums and Product Puzzle: The Answer Is in the Details!
Episode #6 of the course The world’s most compelling logic puzzles by John Robin
Welcome back!
Let’s see if you can figure out the trick behind today’s problem. It is a bit more blatantly mathematical, but the answer is in the details.
It goes like this: A teacher says to two of his students, “I’m thinking of two natural numbers greater than 1. Try to guess what they are.”
He whispers the product to one student, then whispers the sum to the other.
The first student (who knows the product) says, “I do not know the sum.”
The second student says, “I knew that. The sum is less than 14.”
“I knew that,” says the first student. “However, now I know the numbers.”
After a split second, the second student nods and says, “And now so do I.”
What are the numbers?
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