Einstein’s Logic Puzzle

I just stayed up entirely too late figuring out this puzzle that was purportedly created by Albert Einstein, who claimed only 2% of the world’s population could solve it. This story is likely apocryphal, and certainly more than 2% of all people could solve it, given enough time. Hopefully this won’t detract from your enjoyment of it:

Facts:

  • There are 5 houses in 5 different colors.
  • In each house lives a person with a different nationality.
  • These 5 owners drink a certain 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 drink.

Hints:

  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 person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
  7. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
  8. The man living in the house right in the center drinks milk.
  9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
  10. The man who smokes Blend lives next to the one who keeps cats.
  11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
  12. The owner who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.
  13. The German smokes Prince.
  14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
  15. The man who smokes Blend has a neighbor who drinks water.

The question is:
Who owns the fish?

5 thoughts on “Einstein’s Logic Puzzle

  1. you can bet i have a spreadsheet started… but i’ve been slacking at work too much lately. i’ll see if i can do this after hours.

  2. Nice! It felt so good when I got it. Took me about an hour and a lot of it was slow going, but it sped up towards the end and I ploughed through the finish line. Congrats!

  3. There are advantages to being in a hospital waiting room for hours upon end – each time I got a little frustrated, I could put it down for a few minutes, realize there was nothing more interesting to do, and pick it up to struggle onwards, sans distractions!

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