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awaspaas · May 17, 2003, 12:36 AM

Einstein said only 2% of the population is able to solve this puzzle. Lets see how many MacNNers can do it! It took me about a half-hour to solve.

Googling for the answer is cheating.
Don't post the answer to this thread!

Einstein's Riddle

There are 5 houses of 5 different colors. In each house lives a person of a different nationality. Each of the 5 residents drinks a certain type of beverage, smokes a certain brand of cigar, and keeps a certain pet. None of them have the same pet, smoke the same brand of cigar or drink the same beverage.

The question is: who owns the fish?

Hints:

The Brit lives in the red house.
The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
The Dane drinks tea.
The green house is on the left of the white house.
The resident of the green house drinks coffee.
The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
The resident of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
The resident of the center house drinks milk.
The Norwegian lives in the first house.
The person who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
The person who keeps the horse lives next to the one who smokes Dunhill.
The person who smokes Bluemasters drinks beer.
The German smokes Prince.
The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
The person who smokes Blends has a neighbor who drinks water.

Good luck! PM me to see if your answer agrees with mine.

Adam Betts · May 17, 2003, 01:19 AM

Einstein

RAzaRazor · May 17, 2003, 01:32 AM

Sweet. I got it in about 30 minutes. Verified my answer on google!

It's easy if you write it down, and then cross out the hints you have already used.

awaspaas · May 17, 2003, 01:40 AM

If any of you are going to take the GRE, this riddle will be great practice - a lot of the questions on it are like this, except not quite this involved.

vmpaul · May 17, 2003, 01:43 AM

Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick?

Ozmodiar · May 17, 2003, 01:50 AM

That was fun. It took me about a half hour, also.

Cipher13 · May 17, 2003, 02:10 AM

Firstly the 2% figure comes from nowhere but Einsteins ass, and I think it's a massive overstatement

Secondly, even if it was accurate, the reason so few people could figure it out (2% is actually a lot when you consider how many could *READ* it in the first place) is simply that they can't be bothered.

Nicko · May 17, 2003, 02:16 AM

GOt it!! tooke me about half an hour as well

edit: see it took so much brain power that I can't spell now.

boots · 08:43 AM

I got it wrong at first. I'll have to go back and see where I screwed up...

Ok, I got it. I misread the blends/cats hint and assigned the cat to to wrong house.

Took about half an hour total.

wallinbl · May 17, 2003, 09:06 AM

Not too bad.

wallinbl · May 17, 2003, 09:08 AM

Originally posted by Cipher13:
Firstly the 2% figure comes from nowhere but Einsteins ass, and I think it's a massive overstatement

Secondly, even if it was accurate, the reason so few people could figure it out (2% is actually a lot when you consider how many could *READ* it in the first place) is simply that they can't be bothered.

Isn't 2% basically the very top of the bell curve?

Ability to read and the ability to solve this puzzle are two different things.

Hozie · May 17, 2003, 09:29 AM

The reason 2% sounds so strange is that this is an apocryphal story; Einstein never proposed this puzzle but it's such fun to say so that everyone picked up on it.

jckalen · May 17, 2003, 09:49 AM

This is just a run-of-the-mill logic problem, like you would find in a crossword puzzle magazine. I think a more accurate statement would be that only about 2% of the population does logic problems. They aren't that hard and I would be willing to bet that 80+% of the population would be able to do them if they cared to.

kovacs · May 17, 2003, 10:01 AM

Few, I've got it... It also took me about 30 minutes ..

I drew five houses and filled the gaps in...

Swiss Bob · May 17, 2003, 10:05 AM

About 15 minutes (thanks OmniGraffle! - it would have been longer otherwise).

Millennium · May 17, 2003, 10:59 AM

I did this one a while back. It took me about two hours, but this was spread over several days, on and off.

If I actually sat down and tried it again with some dedicated time, I don't know how long it'd take me to solve.

wataru · May 17, 2003, 11:35 AM

I remember doing logic puzzles like this back in grade school. The trick is how you approach the problem. If you set up a grid of each category versus every other category, you can whip through this problem easily.

That said, it did take me quite a while, but it was 2AM and I've had almost no sleep all week.

euphras · May 17, 2003, 01:36 PM

Weeeeee...... took about 3/4 h, was fun! Thanks for the riddle!

awaspaas · May 17, 2003, 03:05 PM

Originally posted by Swiss Bob:
About 15 minutes (thanks OmniGraffle! - it would have been longer otherwise).

Aha, good plan - I used ChemDraw, heh.

holygoat · May 17, 2003, 03:39 PM

The nice thing about Google... no longer do you have no way of confirming your answer to a riddle

Took about 10 minutes of work.

MindFad · May 17, 2003, 04:23 PM

That was fun!

Took almost a half-hour for me. Good stuff.

Sosa · May 17, 2003, 05:01 PM

Took me about 45 minutes to an hour. My excuse it that I'm sick and couldn't concentrate as well. Anyway, I made an assignment error discovered only when I tried to place the Prince smoking German. Had to redraw and start over.

These are the type of problems encountered in the LSAT, which I took about 1.5 years ago. I ended up doing badly on the portion because a similar error forced me to reanswer 6 questions. I ran out of time and had to guess 40% of the logic games section.

Heck though I still made it to law school.

Also I do believe more than 2% of the population can solve this problem. The disparity would be in how much time it will take them to do so. But offer anyone off the street $500 (who can read) and give them 12 hours, I'm sure 50% would get it right. Or maybe I'm just being naive due to my university sorroundings. Maybe I should try this on my girlfriend...

Nicko · May 17, 2003, 05:05 PM

Originally posted by Sosa:

Also I do believe more than 2% of the population can solve this problem. The disparity would be in how much time it will take them to do so. But offer anyone off the street $500 (who can read) and give them 12 hours, I'm sure 50% would get it right. Or maybe I'm just being naive due to my university sorroundings. Maybe I should try this on my girlfriend...

Maybe the 2% has to do with the people willing to spend the time to actually figure it out rather than say 'screw it'

SupahCoolX · May 18, 2003, 03:16 PM

It took me a bit. The first time through, I was near the end, but then put the Dane in the wrong spot (in a bonehead move- I just wasn't paying attention). So, I had to start all over, but it only took a few minutes the next time through.

Anybody know a good place to find more of these?

alex_kac · May 18, 2003, 07:39 PM

2% sounds about right - its the amount of people unemployed who have the time to be bothered to figure it out