Einstein's Puzzle

Saturday, March 05, 2005

Albert Einstein supposedly wrote this puzzle. It is said that only 2% of the world's population are able to solve it. I think the puzzle is amazing, and worth trying!

Puzzle Context:

There are 5 houses in 5 different colors. In each house lives a man with a different nationality. The 5 owners drink a certain type of beverage, smoke a certain brand of cigar, and keep a certain pet. No owners 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 green house's owner drinks coffee.
  • The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
  • The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
  • The man living in the center house drinks milk.
  • The Norwegian lives in the first house.
  • The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
  • The man who keeps the horse lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
  • The owner who smokes Bluemasters drinks beer.
  • The German smokes Prince.
  • The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
  • The man who smokes Blends has a neighbor who drinks water.

I've done the puzzle using an extremely effective way; the puzzle can be represented by six dimensions of properties crossing together. Drawing each two dimensions together, you'll get a set of 15 different tables (Colour Vs Nationality, Pet Vs Drink, Position Vs Pet …etc).

So what I've been doing is filling these tables and copying adjacent values till I got all of them filled. The given hints are basis to start filling the tables. I've prepared an excel sheet with the tables arranged a certain way to make the process easier.

You can email me and I'll send you the answer willingly, but be sure to try doing the puzzle yourself or you'll miss a lot!