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

This question describes seven relatives spread across three married couples and one unmarried student, and asks which people are certainly women based only on the kinship words used, such as father, grandfather, daughter-in-law, uncle and sister-in-law.

1. Start from the top of the family. F is called E's grandfather, so F sits one generation above E's parents. D is called C's mother-in-law or father-in-law (daughter-in-law of D), so D has a son who is married to C.
2. Rule out B as that son. If B had married C, C would be B's wife, and a wife is not called her husband's sister-in-law. Since C is separately described as the sister-in-law of B, D's son cannot be B.
3. Identify D's son as G. G, the doctor, is called the uncle of the student (E), and B is E's father, so G must be B's brother. This fits only if D's son is G, so G is married to C, and G and B are brothers.
4. Fix the grandparent couple. Since F is E's grandfather and D is B's parent, D and F form the senior couple. The only person left to pair with B is A, so A is B's wife and E's mother.
5. Assign gender from the words used. F, a grandfather, is male, so his wife D is female. C, a daughter-in-law, is a term used only for women, so C is female. C's husband G is therefore male, and his brother B is male too. A, married to B, is female. E's gender is never mentioned anywhere in the passage, so it stays unknown.

The three people whose gender is fixed beyond doubt are A, D and C. The other answer choices either drop one of these three or wrongly add E, whose gender the passage never reveals.

Let's summarize:

• D's son turns out to be G, not B, because C is B's sister-in-law and not his wife.
• A, C and D are definitely female; E's gender is never stated.

So the group that definitely represents the females is A, D, C.