What number do you have bro?

[Maudibe]

A New Years Riddle,

A father tests the intelligence of his two self proclaimed genius off springs by picking two consecutive numbers between 1-10 and telling the first number to one child and the second number to the other. He then asks them to figure out what the other has without giving the number.

Child A says to child B: "I have no idea what your number is."

Child B says to child A: "I don't have any idea what your number is either."

Child A immediately said to the father: "I know what the other number is" and correctly gave it to the father"

How did child A figure it out?

[access-mdb]

Child A immediately said to the father: " know what the number is and correctly gave it to the father"

Should this line be: 'Child A immediately said to the father: "I know what the number is" and correctly gave it to the father'? It would make more sense (not a lot!) or maybe the original line is the clue....

[RockE]

Should this line be: 'Child A immediately said to the father: "I know what the number is" and correctly gave it to the father'? It would make more sense (not a lot!) or maybe the original line is the clue....

Are you saying that grammar is a clue... and that his Riddle is legitimate?
Or, were you saying that sentence construction may perhaps be a clue about his mental state when composing the Riddle for us?

Why don't we simply assume that Maudibe has intentionally composed his Riddle as a "jape" (perhaps about New Years partying) until he clarifies things a wee bit?

[BATcher]

Given the usual meaning of "Choose a number between X and Y" to include both X and Y, the question would be very easy to answer if the numbers were binary.
Child A knows their number is 0x1 = 1_base10 since child B has the consecutive number 0x10 = 2_base10

Note to Maudibe: some prufe-reading of the question reqd. !

[RolandJS]

hey all, "Keep Clam and Proof-read!"

[Maudibe]

Reworded to make sense. I guess the New Years bubbly clouded my brain. Thanks guys for the pickup!

@Batcher

Clever answer but the father was not using base 2.

Maud

[DavidHLevin]

If I'm understanding the problem, then I think that child A was given the number 2. Child A couldn't tell at first whether child B had been given the number 1 or 3. But when child B couldn't tell child A's number, it was evident that child B did not hold the number 1. So child A could infer that child B was given the number 3.

[Maudibe]

Same goes if Child A had the number 9. Kudos to David!!!!