Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Whose Fish?

This is a brainteaser logic puzzle attributed to Einstein.

Whose fish is it?:

There are five houses in a row in different colors. In each house lives a person with a different nationality. The five owners drink a different drink, smoke a different brand of cigar and keep a different pet, one of which is a Walleye Pike. The question is-- who owns the fish?

Hints:
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 on the left of the white house.
5. The green house owner drinks coffee.
6. The person who smokes Pall Malls keeps birds.
7. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhills.
8. The man living in the house right in the center drinks milk.
9. The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
10. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
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 Princes.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The man who smokes Blends has a neighbor who drinks water.
According to the home page on Coudal Partners, over 7000 people wrote in, and over half of them got it right.

1 comment :

Anonymous said...

I know this (or something very similar) as "the zebra puzzle" from Peter Norvig's Paradigms of AI Programming (chapter 11, I think—the code for the puzzle doesn't appear to be online). Googling for "zebra logic puzzle" turns up a bunch of other hits.