Einstein's Riddle: Who owns the fish?

http://www.southernct.edu/~fields/al...nsteinsRiddle/

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The following riddle was supposedly posed by Albert Einstein (I haven't been able to verify that), he reportedly claimed that less than 2 percent of the people in the world could solve it.

There are 5 houses in 5 different colors. In each house lives a person with a different nationality. The 5 owners each drink a certain type of beverage, smoke a certain brand of cigar, and keep a certain type of pet. No owners have the same pet, smoke the same brand of cigar or drink the same beverage.

The following statements are all true:

1. The Brit lives in the red house.
2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Dane drinks tea.
4. The green house is immediately to the left of the white house.
5. The green house's owner drinks coffee.
6. The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
7. The owner of yellow house smokes Dunhills.
8. The man living in the center house drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the one who smokes Dunhills.
12. The owner who smokes Bluemasters drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Prince.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The man who smokes Blends has a neighbor who drinks water.

The question is: "Who owns the fish?"

Believe it or not, there is sufficient information in the list of statements to settle this question.

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It took me 5hours today to figure this out but I got it. Sat at work thinking im never going to get it but I did. Good times.

Don't spoil the answer right away.

http://www.xkcd.com/356/

And that's why all my characters are dead now. .... and I'm still working on it.

Got it!

OMG...

I did a really complicated spreadsheet with all possible combinations...

Then my brain melted...

Then my PC went bang...

Then I got it. :)

And no I won't say who. :D

Solved in 20 minutes <3

Great fun :)

23 minutes...thinking in the morning is a bad thing.

Hooray, logic problems!

30 minutes, I'm a bit slow.

Meh, took 50 minutes. Spent too long thinking about whether 'first house' was first on the left or first on the right...

18 minutes.

if you like this type of puzzle, check suduko. very similar, find the combination sort of puzzle... numbers instead of words

Damn you guys are fast. I'm slow. Dammit. But I got an excuse, and that is I was at work and I had to deal with Customers while doing it. There we go :)

15 minutes, but once everyones figured it out i have an objection.

did all those smoke marks exist at the same time as einstein ?

Answer Is.......

































Red>Norway>Water>Pall Mall>Birds
Blue>Denmark>Tea>Blends>Horses
Yellow>Britain>Milk>Dunhill>Cats
Green>Germany>Coffee>Prince>FISH
White>Sweden>Beer>Bluemasters>Dogs

Took me about an hour. =(

Although I came up with different things than diamond. Wierd. I still got the right fish owner though.

it's fairly simple if you apply the same logic repeatedly.

this is what i had:

Yellow>Norway>Water>dunhill>Cat
Blue>Denmark>Tea>Blends>Horses
Red>Britain>Milk>Pall Mall>Birds
Green>Germany>Coffee>Prince>FISH
White>Sweden>Beer>Bluemasters>Dogs

it would be interesting if there were more then one set of answers. in that case, this puzzle isn't as close to suduko as i thought

Diamond had the right answer, but got there the wrong way; the first rule says that the Brit lives in the red house, but he has the Norwegian in the red.

I got the same as Keyclone.

I got the same as keyclone.
I think there is only one solution.

Ayy I must of mixed up the color of the houses. Still came out the same.

Something is fishy. I have found another solution. Look at statement 12.

12. The owner who smokes Bluemasters drinks beer.

All other statements go "The man who...". This one explicitly says owner. But owner of what? Look at how the question is put: "Who owns the fish?". Well, "the owner" obviously!

So the answer is the Swede. But, you say, each man only has one type of pet, and according to statement 2, the Swede has dogs! Well, google is your friend. Turns out the Swede must have dogfish. What kind of pet the German has is still unknown.

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The following riddle was supposedly posed by Albert Einstein (I haven't been able to verify that), he reportedly claimed that less than 2 percent of the people in the world could solve it.

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I think 2% is on a bit optimistic. :P

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Originally Posted by maqz

I think 2% is on a bit optimistic. :P

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Excellant, thinking outside the box. Its possible the answer is in the riddle as plain as day.