Pedantics

[eldar]

Please take the following three lines, and imagine that you know nothing of the composition of the Family Rosoff:

Alexis - That would be etc.
Carly - That would be Alexis's youngest sister.
Jen - That would be Alexis's eldest sister.

Now tell me, based entirely upon those three statements, what you know about Alexis, Carly, and Jen, and their relative ages.

My answer would be:
Alexis, Carly, and Jen are sisters. Alexis (and thus Carly and Jen) have at least two sisters. Carly is younger than Jen. Alexis and Jen have no sisters who are younger than Carly. I have no idea if either Jen or Carly is either younger or older than Alexis.

P.S. Let arosoff know your views as well :)

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_kent/]

Based purely on the three statements...

Alexis has two sisters. Carly is younger than Jen.

That's it. You don't know how much younger Carly is than Jen, you don't know if Carly and Jen are, in fact, sisters (i.e. they may all be half-sisters with Carly and Jen sharing no parents, they might be adopted sisters of separated parents, you don't know). You certainly don't know Alexis's age in comparison to her sisters. You may be younger than your youngest sister, or older than your oldest sister.

Having typed it so often, the word sister now has no meaning for me.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_kent/]

Ooops. Of course, there may in fact be *more* sisters.