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Einstein's riddle
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: Minneapolis, MN
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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.
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Addicted to MacNN
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: North Hollywood, CA
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Salt Lake City
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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.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: Minneapolis, MN
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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.
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: always on the sunny side
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Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick?
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Quetzlzacatenango
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That was fun. It took me about a half hour, also.
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Registered User
Join Date: Apr 2000
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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.
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Cairo
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GOt it!! tooke me about half an hour as well
edit: see it took so much brain power that I can't spell now.
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Unknown
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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.
(
Last edited by boots; May 17, 2003 at 08:43 AM.
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If Heaven has a dress code, I'm walkin to Hell in my Tony Lamas.
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: somewhere
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Dec 2001
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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.
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Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Dec 2002
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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.
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Senior User
Join Date: Jun 2002
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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.
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It looks just like a telefunken' U-47 - Zappa
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Mac Elite
Join Date: May 2001
Location: Belgium
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Few, I've got it... It also took me about 30 minutes ..
I drew five houses and filled the gaps in...
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Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Staffordshire, England
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About 15 minutes (thanks OmniGraffle! - it would have been longer otherwise).
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Nov 1999
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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.
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You are in Soviet Russia. It is dark. Grue is likely to be eaten by YOU!
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Addicted to MacNN
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Yokohama, Japan
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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.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: May 2002
Location: Germany, 51°51´51" N, 9°05´41" E
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Weeeeee...... took about 3/4 h, was fun! Thanks for the riddle!
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Macintosh Quadra 950, Centris 610, Powermac 6100, iBook dual USB, Powerbook 667 DVI, Powerbook 867 DVI, MacBook Pro early 2011
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: Minneapolis, MN
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Originally posted by Swiss Bob:
About 15 minutes (thanks OmniGraffle! - it would have been longer otherwise).
Aha, good plan - I used ChemDraw, heh.
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Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: UK
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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.
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Posting Junkie
Join Date: Sep 2001
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That was fun! Took almost a half-hour for me. Good stuff.
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Senior User
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: Miami
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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...
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2011 iMac 2.7 i5, 16gb RAM, 1TB HD
Previous Macs: Apple IIc+, iMac 350 G3, iBook 700 G3, G4 Powerbooks 12" 1ghz & 15" 1.67ghz
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Jan 2001
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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'
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Dec 1999
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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?
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Grizzled Veteran
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Central Texas
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2% sounds about right - its the amount of people unemployed who have the time to be bothered to figure it out
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