Answers to Brain Teasers in JM NovDec 2013

1. At the recent jam making contest, four lucky candidates took part to make the juiciest strawberry jam.  The ages of the contestants were 14, 17, 20 and 22.
As it happens the person who came last was the oldest, whereas Sri was three years older than the person who came second.
Jana was neither the oldest nor the youngest and Kalyan finished ahead of the 17 year old, but didn't win.
Jolly was also unlucky this time and didn't win either.
Can you determine who finished where and how old they are?

Answer: We have four persons and four ages. We have to match them and also find out who came first, etc. Let us call the person who came first as P1, the person who came second as P2, and third and fourth are P3 and P4. Let us also call their ages Y1, Y2, Y3 and Y4 respectively.
Now, it says that the oldest came last, so P4 has age Y4=22 and this cannot be Jana (since he was neither the oldest nor youngest).  Now Kalyan was ahead of the 17 year old, but he didn't win. Since the 22 year old came last, the 17 year old cannot be last, so he can be at worst third. This means that Kalyan must be ahead of the third, so he can be second or first. But it also says he didn't win, so Kalyan must be second. So P2=Kalyan. And so the 17 year old should be third, Y3=17. So the ages of the first and second can only be either 14 or 20 since
Y4=22.
It says Sri is three years older than the person who came second but this is Kalyan. So Kalyan must be 14, Y2=14, otherwise if he is 20, Sri has to be 23, but this is not allowed. So Sri must be the 17 year old and must have come third: P3=Sri.
To find out who is first and fourth, we see that Jolly did not win, so Jolly must be the oldest and last: P4=Jolly. That leaves Jana aged 20 as the winner.
So the winners in order are Jana (20), Kalyan (14), Sri (17), Jolly (22).

2. Place all of the digits from 1 to 9 into the circles so that the sum of the numbers in each straight line is the same.