# Einstiens problem



## bluedasher (Oct 1, 2010)

This is a very hard problem that I just figured out and got correct and I am so happy so I figured you guy's might like to give it a try...
don't spoil the answer for everyone by cheating. I will eventually post the answer to the puzzle. Ill try to create a poll for the answers (submit your answer through the poll). Just a fun fact that might keep you motivated 98% of people who attempt this will fail and 2% will succeed. 
My source is...

http://www.chessandpoker.com/

Since I don't know how to post a spoiler here it is...


Einstein's Problem: The Facts

Einstein's logic problem consists of three parts: a list of facts, a simple question and a list of clues to help us along. Einstein assures us that the facts and clues he provides can be used together in order to answer the question he poses, although he does not say how they will interact. The first step in solving this mystery will be to review each of these three components, which are presented below.

Einstein's List of Facts

1. There are 5 houses (in a row) painted 5 different colors: Blue, Green, Red, White and Yellow.
2. In each house there lives a person of a different nationality: Brit, Dane, German, Norwegian or Swede.
3. These 5 owners each drink a certain beverage: Beer, Coffee, Milk, Tea or Water.
4. They also smoke a certain brand of cigar: Bluemaster, Dunhill, Pall Mall, Prince or Blend.
5. Additionally, they also keep a certain type of pet: Cats, Birds, Dogs, Fish or Horses.
6. The owners DO NOT have the same pet, smoke the same brand of cigar or drink the same beverage.

So now we have a somewhat cryptic list of facts about FIVE different owners, each of whom live in one of FIVE different houses. Each of these owners apparently has a favorite drink, and even a favorite cigar. They each also raise a certain type of pet. The last line in the fact list also tells us that none of the owners share any of their favorites, pets or houses with another owner. In other words, each attribute (the color of their house, their nationality, favorite drink or cigar and even their pet) is unique to only one owner. For example, if one owner's favorite cigar is Bluemaster, then no other owner would have that certain brand as a favorite. OK, but what does this list of facts have to do with anything? Well, it must now be time for the famous question.
Einstein's Question: "Who Keeps Fish?"

Using the facts above as a stepping stone, Einstein now poses a question. The seemingly simple query has Einstein wondering, "Who Keeps the Fish?". While we know that one of the five owners raises Fish, we certainly have no idea on how to figure out which specific owner it is yet. But what we do have is a fairly large list of attributes that we know are unique to their respective owners. So, in theory, if we can start to narrow down some of the possibilities as to which attributes match up with each owner, perhaps we would be able to gain a clearer picture of which owner could possibly raise the Fish. To do so, we'd have to successfully eliminate all of the other four possibilities (Cats, Birds, Dogs and Horses) for this mystery owner in order to be certain though. At this point Einstein offers up a sadistically innocent-looking list of 15 clues that will help us do just that.
Einstein's Puzzle: The Clues

Einstein's List of Clues

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 owner who smokes Pall Mall rears Birds.
7. The owner of the Yellow house smokes Dunhill.
8. The owner living in the center house drinks Milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The owner who smokes Blend lives next to the one who keeps Cats.
11. The owner who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
12. The owner who smokes Bluemaster drinks Beer.
13. The German smokes Prince.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the Blue house.
15. The owner who smokes Blend has a neighbor who drinks Water.

Browsing through the list, we discover that Einstein's clues come in several varieties and should indeed help us start to gain a clearer picture as to who owns/likes/keeps what. It appears there are quite a few informational types of clues that simply state a concrete fact, connecting two of the variables together directly. For example, Clue #1 states that the Brit lives specifically in the Red House. While we don't know which house (out of the five) is Red, we at least know the nationality of the owner who lives there. We'll call these "Concrete Connecting Facts" since they specifically link two of the variables together without needing any further inspection. Actually, we can notice that almost all of the clues fall into this category with only a few exceptions. The Clues 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12 and 13 are all factual based, while the remaining clues (4, 10, 11, 14 and 15) are a bit more complex. We'll call this group of clues "Relative Location Facts" since their locations are relative to other variables which still need to be solved before they'll be of any use to us. For example, Clue #4 states that the Green house is on the left of the White house. To use this clue, we'll first have to figure out where the White house is located.


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## Stefan (Oct 1, 2010)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism


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## bluedasher (Oct 1, 2010)

Yeah, ok, your right. I'll edit my source in.


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## Stefan (Oct 1, 2010)

I've heard of it before but never tried it, might do so this time. How long do you think it takes to solve (or how long did it take you)?


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## oprah62 (Oct 1, 2010)

Spent 15-30 minutes on it and I found the solution. 


Spoiler



German


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## hawkmp4 (Oct 1, 2010)

"A good fifteen minutes." xD
That's not very much at all, I'll give it a shot tomorrow after my exam.


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## oprah62 (Oct 1, 2010)

Doesn't take too much. I got an answer pretty quickly but it was wrong, I found so by checking my work. It's like a puzzle.


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## RyanReese09 (Oct 1, 2010)

lol everyone picked oprahs spoiler


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## Ranzha (Oct 1, 2010)

RyanReese09 said:


> lol everyone picked oprahs spoiler


 
No, I chose the answer I came up with.


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## RyanReese09 (Oct 1, 2010)

Ranzha V. Emodrach said:


> No, I chose the answer I came up with.


 
i implied that everyone just randomly picked ,yes, but i wasn't trying to imply everyone cheated


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## Weston (Oct 1, 2010)

Took me about 10 minutes.
Pretty easy if you have pencil and paper to use.


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## nickvu2 (Oct 1, 2010)

Finding the solution reminded me of sudoku.


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## Joker (Oct 1, 2010)

I've done this before...


Spoiler



German if I am not wrong


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## hic0057 (Oct 1, 2010)

I spent 5 minutes and took a 1 in3 chance guess and i THINK I got it right


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## Enter (Oct 1, 2010)

http://www.chessandpoker.com/einsteins-problem-solution.html


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## Nestor (Oct 1, 2010)

I remember doing this one about 8 years ago... wasn't hard at all (solved like a spreadsheet).


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## Zubon (Oct 1, 2010)

I've seen this puzzle a few times but this is the first time to solve it. With a pen and paper, it can be solved by simple logic for quite a few steps. After that, I got to a case where there were a few compounding 50% chances of a certain possibility.
I solved this just like you would a sudoku. Interesting puzzle!

Including information such as "A is next to B" makes it difficult to solve by simultaneous equations.


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## mr6768 (Oct 1, 2010)

It's not really that hard . Took me about 1 hour I think.


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## PhillipEspinoza (Oct 1, 2010)

Tried this a couple years ago. Took me about 30 minutes to figure it out while being distracted. It's pretty cool once you figure it out. Though, I wouldn't say it's the HARDEST riddle in the world.


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## AvGalen (Oct 1, 2010)

Logigram


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## Dene (Oct 1, 2010)

Personally I got annoyed at reading the same stuff twice over when some idiot insisted upon repeating everything that I had just read.


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## bluedasher (Oct 1, 2010)

PhillipEspinoza said:


> Tried this a couple years ago. Took me about 30 minutes to figure it out while being distracted. It's pretty cool once you figure it out. Though, I wouldn't say it's the HARDEST riddle in the world.



Nah, I wouldn't say it is the hardest riddle in the world either, but the process is interesting though.



StefanPochmann said:


> I've heard of it before but never tried it, might do so this time. How long do you think it takes to solve (or how long did it take you)?



It took me around an hour to solve, but then again it seems to be taking other people around 30 min. The process is interesting and I felt accomplished when finished. If it was a harder problem I would feel even happier if I got it right. I figured I'd post this because you guys would be likely to get it right too.


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## Athefre (Oct 1, 2010)

The puzzle became less interesting to me after having the poll be the first thing I saw. I wasn't logged in.

93% is close to 98%, but I don't think that matters when some people have seen this before and others use google.


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## Shortey (Oct 1, 2010)

I picked the norwegian because norwegians are cool.


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## celli (Oct 1, 2010)

this form of puzzle is called logikwiz (in Dutch, I don't know how it is called in English). If you practice some logikwiz puzzles, this one is easy to do. I did it last year, in math class with one other student, we both had the solution within half an hour. I don't know the answer anymore, but I also had different clues, so I think my answer isn't the right answer on this one. For everyone who wants to try: google logikwiz puzzle and you know how to do it, it is very easy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


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## Mike Hughey (Oct 1, 2010)

http://www.speedsolving.com/forum/showthread.php?187-Jokes&p=48674&viewfull=1#post48674


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## CharlesOBlack (Oct 1, 2010)

Found the answer in 10-15 mins while watching some videos on YouTube.

Had I been paying attention I could've done it sub-10, I think.


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## Chrish (Oct 1, 2010)

So it's a competition now?

I got it in 8 minutes while writing a book, riding a unicycle and balancing a walrus on my left elbo.


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## Hyprul 9-ty2 (Oct 1, 2010)

LIES. Humans don't have elbos


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## bluedasher (Oct 4, 2010)

*The Answer*

Since I don't think anyone is going to guess anymore I've decided to post the answer. I'm not even sure if it is necessary anymore due to the fact that people have posted the link to the answer, however it is indeed the German! Congratulations to the 84.09% of you who got it right. 84.09% is certainly higher than the 2% that Einstein estimated would get it correct. I believe that everyone should have gotten it right, but maybe the people who didn't get it right were the only ones who didn't cheat or look up the answer. Anyway I hope this was somewhat fun and next time I might post a harder riddle.


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## Zubon (Oct 4, 2010)

More Riddles!

Hopefully ones that require a pen and paper.


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## tim (Oct 4, 2010)

If you use a table like this one, it's rather easy to solve.






But it's quite a challenge to solve it solely in your head.


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## Toad (Oct 4, 2010)

As Mike showed, this isn't Einstein's Riddle in it's initial form and it's therefore not the one he stated 2% would get right.


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