A 30 year old man married a 25 year old woman, so we know from the beginning that they are 5 years apart. When she died at age 50, her husband was 55 years old. We can consider this “X” amount of years of crying.

10 years after he stopped crying, he died. The brain teaser asks how many years was he a widower if he died at age 80.

We have the following equations to set up:

Amount of years as a widower (Y) = number of years crying (X) + 10

80 = Y + 55

Note that we got a little too much information and we did not need to solve for X. Our goal is to solve for Y, and therefore Y (amount of years as a widower) is 80 – 55 = 25. So the answer is the husband was a widower for 25 years.