'UNSOLVABLE' Logic Puzzle: What Are Their Ages?

This is one of those brain teasers that sounds like it's impossible to solve but you can work through it (like the logic puzzle of Cheryl's birthday). A mathematician tells a census taker he has 3 children. The product of their ages is 72 and the sum of their ages is the house number. The census taker tries to figure it out but explains he still does not know. The mathematician says, "Of course not. I forgot to tell you my oldest child loves chocolate chip cookies." Now the census taker figures it out. What are the ages of the children?

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[DanDart]

The census taker stares at the mathematician and says "I don't have time for this nonsense. Just tell me."

[heliocentric]

The correct answer is: 1, 1, 72 of course

[bombasticbrian.]

I thought the answer was 288 and 1/2 and 1/2

[scotthaggerty]

"The product of my children's ages is 72 and the sum of their ages is my house number, "
"Sir this is a Wendy's"

[rhandeymaahrsch]

Census taker: "What are the ages of your children"
Mathematician: "solve this riddle"
Census taker: "here’s your court date for obstruction of the census"
Mathematician:

[kevinsullwold]

Maybe he said he couldn't figure it out because he didn't feel like spending ten minutes working out all the possibilities as opposed to telling the mathematician to just give him the damn answer.

[hessylaguna]

i got it! Before watching the video.
The mathematician has 3 kids the oldest one likes chocolate chip cookies. This means that the oldest child is a pleb and can't be older than 9. No one has 3 children when they realize that the first one is a filthy casual. This means that during the second pregnancy he decided not to have anymore children. So why then does he have 3 kids? Well the answer is simple, he had twins!
On average it takes around 5 years to notice just how plebish your son or daughter has turned out. so the difference between the twins and the eldest child is 5.
this means that the possible combinations are:
1, 1, 6
2, 2, 7
3, 3, 8
or
4, 4, 9
the only combination there that multiplies to 72 is 3, 3, 8
meaning that the guys house number is 14. and the age of his 3 children are
3 3 and 8.

[Jotakumon]

How it really went:

Census taker: "What are the ages of your children?"
Mathematician: "The product of their ages is 72, while their sum is the house number."
Census taker: "How am I supposed to get that?"
Mathematician: "Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot: my oldest child likes chocolate cookies."
Census taker: "Yeah, okay, I got it now." writes down 1, 2, 3 "Ain't nobody got time for this."

[anythinganyway]

Census taker: ages?
Mathematician: here's a riddle for ya, son
Census taker: just shut the f up i ain't got no time

[ironcito]

I once tried testing a census taker with this riddle. He ate my liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

[alessandromarchetti]

The answer is 648, 1/27, 3, and the house number is approximately 651.037

[LuvableShannon]

Well... I mean, congrats to everyone who did figure it out. But the whole concept of one child being the oldest means no other child can be the same age is a huge stretch. You can't definitively say no parent doesn't refer to an older twin as "the oldest", and absolutely any parent would refer to a child 9 months older than another as "the oldest". So... it's still completely possible that the answer is 2, 6, 6, and the father was just hoping the census guy knew a good cookie recipe.

[holden_tld]

census taker: how old are your kids?
math nerd: here's a riddle that'll answer that.
census taker: sir i have a thousand houses to get to, i'm just gonna put down that you have three cats.

[collectionofatoms]

Here I was overthinking it from the thumbnail:

What's the house number? IDK
What's the oldest son loving chocolate chip cookies have to do with anything? IDK
The writers want me to do some lateral thinking with the way this is written I bet!
Are there any notable cookie eaters that I know their address?
Oh what! There actually is! The cookie monster lives at 123 Sesame St.
So if their ages are A, B, and C then:
A+B +C = 123
ABC = 72
Plug those into wolfram. Glad I didn't spend 2 pages solving that by hand. Whew!
A real solution exists!
Their ages must be 69.3362, 1.3319, 1.3319!
Is it just true that cookie monster is the oldest one on Sesame St?
I don't know they all seem to be different species from one another!?
Maybe they experience time differently and this is a "dog years" sort of age keeping.
Still kind of weird to think that the cookie monster would be that much older. I mean that's a huge delta between 69.3362 and 1.3319.
Is this consistent with Sesame St. canon?

[JHandle]

You forgot to mention that the census taker is a perfect logician. Or are we just meant to assume that detail?

[hermimonk]

1. Intake riddle.
2. Ponder riddle.
3. Get frustrated.
4. Unpause video.
5. After 5 seconds, suddenly realize a vital piece of info, just before it's said in the video.
6. Continue solving.
7. Hit another roadblock.
8. Move mouse cursor over unpause button.
9. Get another burst of inspiration and solve the riddle.
10. Write comment detailing method taken to solve riddle.

[robertbeste]

I thought this was going to be a pun based on the chocolate chip cookie detail... because one eight nine of them....

Dad Jokes > Math.

[martincohn]

I can imagine the obsesive mathematician talking to his wife:
"ok dear, in 9 years time there will be a census. we need to have a child by next year and then twins in 6 years time. be aware that if we don't have twins I will have to seek a second woman to have my child/ren, so they all have the right age"

[HyLion]

For this to happen, we have to assume that the mathematician was just bored one day and realized that the sum of his kids' ages was his house number for some reason.

[JohnSmith-rgmh]

What person has twins at 1 and a 72 year old son or daughter