Einstein's Riddle

[Zykaz]

How many of you can get it? I'm pretty sure I figured out the answer. If you're really desperate for the answer and can't figure it out, go ahead and send me an email, and I'll reply with my answer.

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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.

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Einstein said 98% of the world could not solve it. It's not hard, you just need to pay attention and be patient.

[thrall]

The *** own's the fish.straight and simple,I don't think anybody can't solve it if he wans to.

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No spoiling!

Rhadon

[Hang-Man]

If Einstein were that clever, he would have made theories that worked, not ones that fall apart, and make an infinite number of black holes as soon as the uncertainty principle is introduced. I agree with Thrall, the *** owns the fish. No question.

[keith]

Got it. 98% huh...I dont know about that. It's not hard but it's anoying.
I'm about to go burn down five houses, kill one guy of each of those nationalities, same goes for teh animals, and I'll never drink/smoke anything that was mentioned in that again!

[Zykaz]

No, its not a trick, and yes, I typed everything right. Like I said, if you want the answer, send me an email. After that, if you even want a full explanation, I'll provide one.

[tom haggen]

Pardon my stupidity but does rears mean that he doesn't own any birds.

[Zykaz]

No, the opposite. It means he raises birds.

[Azealzel]

If you ever think you have the answer, go to this link: www.stephenson.ca/Einstein/

It will be faster than waiting for a reply to your e-mail and you will get the full solution. Though you can access the solution only if you have the right answer.

[Tuatara]

You know I already posted this one some time ago ...

I got it out in 15 minutes, my wife took 20 minutes. I can't believe it really as hard as E makes out.

[Nihilist]

It isn't that hard, especially if you write it all out, so you can visualize it. After staring at it for about 15 minutes I got it too. The reason it seems hard is because it takes many progressive logical steps to reach your conclusion, but there is only one possible answer.

[Jacks Complete]

tom haggen,
"rears" means he raises them.

I tried this one a while back, in a slightly different form. It had two levels, and the fish was the easier of the two to answer, iirc. I spent ages doing it, but my other half sent me the answers in about two minutes, in full, without even writing down any rough workings! Her IQ is scary high. :)

Anyway, IQ changes over time. The "average" IQ is always supposed to be 100, but the mark gets moved every 10-20 years, as paople get smarter. So back in Einstein's day, 50+ years ago, now, it was a MENSA standard puzzle. Now, however, it isn't. http://home.comcast.net/~neoeugenics/TRC.htm says it rises by 3 points a decade, which tallies with the 10-15 point change every generation. So, 1.03^5 = 116 IQ points. By a sort of vague line of logic and twisted math, if 2% could do it then, about 10% can now...

Anyway, we all have artifacts to play with these days, like search engines and spreadsheets, and so measuring intelligence is very tricky compared to back then, when it was still very tricky.

Finally, Einstein was very good at hard physics, and solved some great problems, but he was not an experimental psycologist, any more than you would ask your plumber to do a heart bypass, even though they are <i>kind of</i> the same idea...

[Efraim_barkbit]

Yes.. I got it.. took about 15 minutes, and then 5 more for "controll thinking"
Are you supposed to "think" it out ,or are you allowed to use paper and a pen?
Then it would be hell of a lot easier.

Even thought it probably isn´t true, I like the thought of me being in those top 2% :D

[nbk2000]

UTFSE! :rolleyes:

http://www.roguesci.org/theforum/showthread.php?threadid=2183

[Zykaz]

Sorry nbk. When I click on that link though, I get an "Invalid thread specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the webmaster." vBulletin message.

keith: When you post in the Water Cooler, then your post count doesn't go up. If you're talking about outside of the Water Cooler, and you know that posts don't count in here, then disregard that.