Einstein Puzzle

The following is a quiz written by Albert Einstein. He said 98% of the people in the world cannot solve the quiz. Are you among the other two percent?There is no-trick to this. The answer is based only on the facts given. The peoples nationality has nothing to do with the answer or their preferences, such as color of house, etc. I gaurantee that if you stop and look at the answer before you've solved it, you'll 'kick' yourself, because it's completely solvable. Be sure to grab a pen and paper.

The puzzle:

FACTS
1. There are 5 houses in 5 different colors.
2. In each house lives a person with a different nationality.
3. These 5 owners drink a certain beverage, smoke a certain brand of cigar and keep a certain kind of pet.
4. No owners have the same pet, smoke the same brand of cigar or drink the same kind of drink.

THE QUESTION IS:...WHO KEEPS FISH?

HINTS
1. The Brit lives in a red house.
2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Dane drinks tea.
4. The green house is on the left of the white house.
5. The green house owner drinks coffee.
6. The person who smokes Pall Mall raises birds.
7. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
8. The man living in the house right in the center drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The man who smokes blend lives next to the man who keeps cats.
11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
12. The owner who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Prince.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the Blue House.
15. The man who smokes blend has a neighbor who drinks water.

Need the answer?

The answer:

yellow blue red green white
Norwegian Dane Brit German Swede
water tea milk coffee beer
Dunhill Blend Pall Mall Prince Bluemasters
cats horse birds FISH dog

Methodology:

Make a grid, 5 columns for the house numbers, 5 rows for color, nationality, smoke, drink, and pets. Fill it in as you go.

There are only two clear facts given.

8 --> Hse.3=MILK in center house
9 --> Hse.1=NORWEGIAN lives in first house.

The next most useful statement would be 14, because it allows only one choice.
14 --> Hse.2=BLUE

Next, statement 4 gives two choices:
(4.The green house is on the left of the white house.)
Hse.3=GREEN, Hse.4=WHITE OR Hse.4=GREEN,
Hse. 5=WHITE

Try the first choice. Looking at statement 5, we see that
this must be wrong, because MILK is already at Hse.3. So,

Hse.4=GREEN
Hse.5=WHITE

Then, we can easily fill in:
5 --> Hse.4=COFFEE
1 --> Hse.3=RED, BRITISH
7 --> Hse.1=YELLOW,DUNHILL

Next, statement 3 gives two choices;
The Dane who drinks tea, is either in house 2, or house 5.

Check out statements 12, and 15, and see what houses will
accommodate them.

You should discover that:
Hse.5=BLUE MASTER, BEER
Hse.1=WATER
Hse.2=BLEND

From that it follows
Hse.4=GERMAN,PRINCE
Hse.5=SWEDISH
Hse.3=PALL MALL

Then we easily fill in that:
2 --> Hse.5=DOGS
6 --> Hse.3=BIRDS
11 --> Hse.2=HORSES
10 --> Hse.1=CATS

The only possible conclusion now is that the GERMAN in house 4 owns the FISH. And now we are done, except for checking out the choice we made when we used statement 3.

If earlier, at statement 3, we had tried Hse.5=DANISH,TEA then: Hse.2=BLUE, MASTER,BEER
Hse.1=WATER then, 15 --> would be a contradiction, because we would have WATER & BLUE MASTER as neighbors. Therefore, our first choice (Hse.2=DANISH,TEA) was indeed correct, so all possibilities have now been exhausted.

Similar Fun Categories: Math, Riddles