Question

A family consists of seven people, A, B, C, D, E, F and G. Out of them, there are three married couples. B, the engineer, is the father of E, who is the student. F, who is a contractor, is the grandfather of E. C is the daughter-in-law of D, who is a professor. G, the doctor, is the uncle of the student. There is one journalist, one housewife and one student. C is the sister-in-law of B. The student is single.

Which of the following groups definitely represents the females?

• A. C, D
• B. A, C
• C. A, D, C
• D. A, D, C, E

Hint:

Work out who is married to whom first, using the daughter-in-law and grandfather clues, then use the sister-in-law and occupation clues to pin down which family members are men and which are women.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is C

Step 1: List the people and the clues.
There are seven people, A, B, C, D, E, F and G, made up of three married couples plus one single member. The clues are: B (engineer) is the father of E (student); F (contractor) is the grandfather of E; C is the daughter-in-law of D (professor); G (doctor) is the uncle of the student; the family has one journalist, one housewife and one student; C is the sister-in-law of B; and E, the student, is single.

Step 2: Work out who D's son is.
C being the daughter-in-law of D means D has a son who is married to C. Check if that son can be B. If B were married to C, then C would simply be B's wife, and a wife is never called her own husband's sister-in-law. Since the passage separately calls C the sister-in-law of B, C cannot be B's wife, so D's son is not B. The doctor G is called the uncle of the student (E), and B is E's father, so G must be B's brother. This fits perfectly if D's son is G. So G is married to C, and G and B are brothers, both sons of D.

Step 3: Place F as the other grandparent.
F is called the grandfather of E. Since D is already fixed as the parent of B (E's father), D belongs to the senior-most generation too, so D and F must be husband and wife, the two grandparents of E.

Step 4: Find E's mother.
Of the seven people, B, C, D, F and G are already placed. Only A is left, so A must be B's wife and E's mother.

Step 5: Fix the genders from the kinship words.
F is called a grandfather, so F is male, which makes his wife D female. C is called a daughter-in-law, a term used only for a woman, so C is female. Since C is married to D's son, that son, G, is male, and his brother B is also male. A, married to B, is female. This gives the three couples (A, B), (C, G) and (D, F), with E left as the single seventh member, matching the question exactly.

Step 6: Decide which people are definitely female.
From Step 5, A, C and D are certainly women. E's gender is never stated by any clue (grandchild, student and uncle are all gender neutral words used about or around E), so E cannot be added with certainty. Option (a) C, D leaves out A even though A is just as certain. Option (b) A, C leaves out D even though D is just as certain. Option (d) wrongly adds E, whose gender is never fixed by the passage.

Final Answer:
The group that definitely represents the females is A, D, C. \[ \boxed{\text{A, D, C}} \]