Solutions
Example 1: Mother-in-law’s only daughter means wife. Thus the statement could be read as “His mother is my wife.” Thus, Ralf must be the father of the boy.
Example 2: Read this as “his father” is my grandfather’s only child.
Obviously this means that the woman would be the sister of the man in the photograph. Option b is correct.Example 3: From the statement, it is clear that Mick is Rick’s father and Rick is Anna’s father. Bridgette and Anna would thus be granddaughters of Mick. Option 4 is correct.
Example 4: X + Y means that X is the father of Y & Y - Z means that Y is the wife of Z. Thus, X is the father-in-law of Z. Option 1 is correct.
The key skills involved in solving questions on blood relations include:
(i) The ability to structure the family tree in terms of visualising the number of generations, the number of people in each generation, etc.
(ii) The ability to understand and use vital clues leading to information such as: husband-wife relationships, father-son relationships, mother-son relationships, sibling relationships
(iii) The ability to keep count of the number of people being talked about in the problem
(iv) The ability to convert clues written in language form into visual cues so that you do not need to read the text again and again. Also, converting the language clues
to visual cues is critical for the purpose of being able to ‘see’ all the clues at one go.