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Einstein's Riddle
Supposedly, Albert Einstein wrote this riddle as a boy, and said 98% of the world could not solve it. 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. Which percentage are you in?There are 5 houses in 5 different colors. In each house lives a man with a different nationality. The 5 owners drink a certain type of beverage, smoke a certain brand of cigar, and keep a certain pet. No owners 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 green house's owner drinks coffee.
- The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
- The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
- The man living in the center house drinks milk.
- The Norwegian lives in the first house.
- The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
- The man who keeps the horse lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
- The owner who smokes Bluemasters drinks beer.
- The German smokes Prince.
- The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
- The man who smokes Blends has a neighbor who drinks water.
Unless you are a genius, you might want to look at an example methodology to solve the riddle. If you get the correct answer, congratulations, you are one of the exclusive group of 121,348,731 people in the world who can!
Enjoy solving riddles? Get busy with Da Vinci’s Other Code.
37 thoughts:
I was able to do it but I could not do it in my head. I made a grid of 5x5 then went down the list of hints and checked them off as I went. The grid was the 5 houses long and the 5 things down were 1.nationality 2.drink 3.smoke 4.color 5.pet. I started with the facts and went from there. Took about 20 minutes it was fun thanks.
Unfortunately you are all wrong and you all fall in the 98% region of people, (don't worry, I got it wrong as well).
In fact, the true solution that Einstein intended is that in no part of the question was there even a mention of a fish. To ask who owns the fish relies on us making the assumption that someone does indeed own a fish. From logic we can determine that the German owns a pet, and we don't know what that pet is, but it is not enough to say that it is a fish. THAT is why only 2% of people get it right. In fact it should probably be less...
LOL! You are right.
Great observation! Though, it would be nice to find out who you were, dear Anonymous.
well, you can't assume that there isn't a fish, and the german doesn't own the fish.there was a mention of a fish, and that was in the question.and it said that "each person has a different pet, different color house"...ect, and they said the word "THE" not "A". so someone owns a fish. plus, they said no tricks and just logic. so that would lead you to believe that the german owns the fish.
but if you were going by pure facts, you would say that the riddle is unsolvable. so either the german owns the fish, it's unsolvable, or einstein was bad at making riddles ;)
German owns the fish, but I doubt Einstein planned this riddle. Any references?
Thanks for the DaVinci link :)
When it told me I would be smart if I figured it out I grabbed for the paper and pencil and made out my grid.
Then after about 30 seconds of checking off stuff on my grid i started laughing. I got the joke.
I discarded my paper and had my answer. I have no idea who owns the fish. It doesn't mention fish.
The Zebra question is basicly the same as this. But in that one you can say any one of the men can keep the zebra. (that one doesn't say the men have a single pet.)
I agree with the "no fish" conclusion. Otherwise 98% of people (well not really a fact, just a play on the numbers) would be able to solve this, by simply making 5 houses, and listing down all the properties.
It may take some people longer to do it, but it's only a matter of time before they figure it out.
So I agree with that since there is no mention of what the fifth animal is, we cannot assume it's a fish.
Actually,
You are all getting lost in details.. The aim of riddle is finding who owns fish right?. In the question, we know that everone should have one different pet and you can not find the answer unles you know who owns other 4 pets. To find it, one must logically place the colour, nationality, cigar, drink. This is because, one need to prove the answer as well. The riddle is very funny, logical and easy.
Not to brag but I solved it in 2 min without writing down anything! ;-)
oh come on..just treat the riddle like an equation (Assumming there are 5 animals: fish,cats,dogs,horses and birds)and solve it as it is. If you do it methodically and without crazy assumptions of whether the fish exists,you can actually work out who owns the fish. It ain't that bad. I won't give any spoilers tho' :D. Good luck. As it is a riddle, it will not explicitly say whether the fish exists just do the process of elimination man, you gotta just solve it. Super cool riddle.
The answer is a fish, period. The purpose of the riddle was to see how hard and some people would try to make it out to be, since it was penned by Einstein himself...these posts prove his theory to a tee.
Without knowing Einstein's age when he created this riddle as a boy, and without knowing German (presumably the language in which he wrote it) to be able to analyze the subtle nuances of his exact wording (which in fact may not be significant anyway, since he was known for his theoretical mathematical brilliance and not for boyhood mastery of linguistics and word choice/usage and therefore may or may not have intended the riddle to say "A fish" or "THE fish" or whatever the original boyhood German did in fact say, which could be of some import in the solving of the riddle), the riddle is not solvable. Dude was still smart though.
All this arguing over whether or not there is a fish reminds me of the Monty Python sketch "Oh where, oh where is the fish? Is it over here? Is it over there?".
The interesting thing about this is it uses the same logic as the hugely popular sudoku puzzles. Create a grid and fill in the knowns to make deductions about the unknown.
So Einstein independent created a sudoku style puzzle as a boy then hes pretty damn clever. Also it may seem easy now to people familiar with sudoku methodology but it might not have been at the time.
I agree with the fact that this puzzle is unsolvable, because there is no fact to support that the fifth type of animal is a fish. But if you DO ASSUME that the fifth animal is a FISH then it's the NORWEGIAN who owns it!
I believe that the question itself - Who owns the fish? - is evidence enough to support the fact that a fish exists. Any other evidence would be contrary to its power as a riddle.
I say that the Norwegian owns it myself, and that the German owns the birds. But go figure, huh? I'm no Einstein.
The puzzle can be solved using the clues so that the house, color, Person, drink, smokes, and pet can be assigned. The German pet (as I solved it) is a blank; the riddle is who owns the fish-- therefore we are to assume that the German has it.
The point is to not mention the fish in the clues! This is to make the puzzle harder not a logic trap.
to answer Jé Maverick and vortex man: the Norwegian cant own the fish: the clues state the German smokes Prince also the person who smokes Pall malls rears birds.
Therefore the German cant have birds. I tried to solve it with the assumption that the Norwegian was the answer, but it didn't work. On christmas break so i had the time....
Ok. I just solved this. We can't determine if there is a fish or not. It may have gotten lost in translation as somebody said. How does assuming there is no fish make you smarter then the rest of the 98%.
Unsolvable
I think that you guys all think about it too much. the whole point of the riddle is to find out who owns THE fish, meaning that there IS a fish and someone MUST own it. The answer is the German, took me an hour but it is the right answer, i figured it out before my Math teacher did ;p. though i must say it is rather interesting reading all your opinions..
Yeah, you guys are trying to pick it apart. The riddle is solvable by pure logic without assumptions.
In Einstein's time it is highly probable that only 2% of the population could solve this riddle, considering the vast majority had little to no formal education as we know it.
This isn't a trick question the fish is suppose to exists.
You are supposed to do this riddle in your head without writing anything down. The reason that only 2% can figure it out is due to needing to store and recall layers of information in your head.
And yes, there is a solution to the riddle! I'm one of the 2%.
Who owns the fish? = German
Albert Einstein = Owns the fish
Albert Einstein = German
....!
zTx....!
People...I was really surprised by some of the really stupid comments made above about whether the fish actually is a pet or whatever...
It is an awesome riddle..I was able to solve it in about 15 min. You just have to follow basic logic & read the facts over & over again. No wonder Einstein said that only 2% of the world's population can solve this.
You do not have to justify your stupidity by falsifying the riddle or making comments that it is unsolvable
if you will make a table and go over the facts, you will see that the german owns the fish. You just have to understand the clues.
omfg, what's the answer??
I think the reason that 98% of the people were, in Einsteins eyes, unable of solving the riddle was because, as Einstein had implied many times, he didn't feel he possessed a far superior brain compared to most people, but rather, he simply felt that he looked at a problem longer than they would and he would work till he found an answer or reason as to why it was unsolvable. (of course, constant brain exercise of this nature will lead to quicker processing speed and generally superior brain capacity/capability, but hey Einstein was humble and vastly intelligent, something that only people of true intelligence ever really seem to have in my opinion, many others who claim high intelligence often boast and brag of it in much the same way that a gangster rapper rhapsodizes of fornicating females who's personalities are lacking of self respect.)
Anyways, good riddle and it is solvable, map a grid and give it that old college effort. I share the same opinion that the german owns the fish, i believe it to be a fact but thats solely my opinion. Good luck.
norwegian owns the fish
There are two solutions. Either the Danish dude has the fish or the German dude. If the Danish dude has it, he's in the yellow house, drinking tea, and smoking Dunhill's. If the German dude has the fish he's in the blue house, drinking water, and smoking prince cigars.
If one were to assume that fish were kept by one of the five men, then it would follow that the German keeps fish. However, in most forms of this riddle, we are told that only the background info and the 15 hints are necessary to solve it. Neither the hints nor the background info mention fish whatsoever. Therefore, the only logical conclusion is that there is no way to tell if anyone owns fish at all. The German is the only person for whom we cannot assign a specific pet. Most would assume, given the question, that he must own fish, but there is no information that necessitates this. For all I know, the German has unicorns. The form of the riddle is left in an unsolvable form, where the German can have any pet in the set of all pets that is not a dog, a cat, a bird, or a horse.
while it's wonderful that some people feel the need to brad about "solving" the riddle in their head, there is no reason that this is the "proper" way to go about trying to solve the riddle. furthermore, it's rather blatantly ignorant of people to say that it's stupid to question the existence of the fish. one should never take something that is part of a question as a given.
[House] Green Blue Yellow Red White
[Nation] Nor Ger Swed Brit Dane
[Beverage[ Coffee Water Milk Beer Tea
[Cigar] Blends Prince Dunhill Bluemaster Pallmall
[Pet] Fish cat dog horse bird
Why would a kidstein know so much about smoking
this is the solution i got from making a grid :
Red Brit Milk Pallmall Birds
Green German Coffee Prince FISH
Yellow Norwegian Water Dunhill Cat
White Swede Beer Bluemaster Dogs
Blue Dane Tea Blends Horses
So the answer is the german...This grid is definitely right..anonymous' (2 above) grid is wrong
If your grid is right, what about question #8: 'The man in the center house drinks milk' and #9: 'The norwegian lives in the first house.'
Your grid order must be wrong...
I disagree with those who say that since the problem does not mention that the fifth pet is fish, it is unsolvable. Those who make this assumption are in the 98%. The other 2% make the best use of information available and dare to make assumptions (which can be wrong), particularly when there is no loss in doing so.
What do you think? Post your thoughts..