One of the makers of Field Notes Notebooks, Coudal Partners, in preparations for their Clandestine edition notebook, shared a brainteaser that supposedly hails from Albert Einstein. Einstein claimed it could only be solved by 2% of the population.
You’ll solve it by using pure logic (and maybe a piece of paper or excel doc). It’s a fun exercise for anyone who enjoys solving something by thinking their way through it.
It goes like this:
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.
There are no tricks, pure logic will get you the correct answer. And yes, there is enough information to arrive at the one and only correct answer.
Their original post which includes links to a couple of hints and a PDF version of the puzzle can be found over at Coudal Partners.