A puzzle

[Mohanlal Karamchand]

From Brainjuice

Alvin and Buzz are nerds and like doing nerdy things. So Alvin called Buzz one day...

"Buzz, I've finished tracing my family tree back from the year 500 AD, and I found one quite special guy".

"What's so special about him?" asked Buzz.

"Well, he was x years old in the year x^2 (x squared) and he had a son who was y years old in the year y^3 (y cubed)".

Buzz looked perplexed "Sorry Alvin, but I can't solve for x or y".

"Well, he was your age when his son was born." said Alvin.

"You're right" said Buzz "He was a special old guy! But I still can't solve for x or y".
How old was the old guy when his son was born?

[Jason Menard]

Moved to Programming Diversions.

[Stefan Wagner]

I got multiple solutions, depending on what you think which is 'really old'.
Today, ages of over 130 years where reported.
For 1320 this would be a nearly impossible age, but do we have a proof?

0011000100110011001100000010000000110001001100100011000000100000001100010011001000110000
0011011100110110001000000011011100110000001000000011011000110000001000000011011000110000

[Warren Dew]

Try winnowing your answers down with the "but I still can't solve for x or y" constraint? If Buzz is 130, he can uniquely determine both x and y, I think.

[Stefan Wagner]

Ah - I thought Buzz is a fool.
Not a perfect logican...

So I will look at my approach again.

[ravinder thirumala]

son at 11----->year was 1331
father at 36--->year was 1296
father was 60 years when got son...

[Sonny Pondrom]

OR ....
son at 12----->year was 1728 son born in 1716
father at 41--->year was 1681 dad born in 1640
father was 76 years when his son was born 0076

[Stefan Wagner]

120 age of F at birth   Age F: 25 year: 625   Age s:  9 year:  729
120 age of F at birth   Age F: 30 year: 900   Age s: 10 year: 1000

Two possibilities, so Buzz doesn't know x and y.

[Sonny Pondrom]

OR...
120 age of F at birth Age F: 0 year: 0 Age s: 5 year: 125
120 age of F at birth Age F: 10 year: 100 Age s: 6 year: 216

:roll:

Whoops: I forgot about the 500 AD rule
I had to look at the answer. Buzz was 60 years old.
[ June 26, 2004: Message edited by: Sonny Pondrom ]