Einstein's Riddle
A popular logic puzzle also known as Einstein's Riddle or the zebra puzzle. Einstein was said to have created this when he was a boy, claiming that "only 2% of the world's population can solve it."

Einstein's such a tease. Haha. The puzzle isn't that hard to crack. I'm certain anyone can solve it if they keep a cool mind and analyze the facts. I thoroughly enjoyed myself solving this. Thanks for the delicious puzzle, Mr Einstein! (:

1. There are five houses.
2. The Englishman lives in the red house.
3. The Spaniard owns the dog.
4. Coffee is drunk in the green house.
5. The Ukrainian drinks tea.
6. The green house is immediately to the right of the ivory house.
7. The Old Gold smoker owns snails.
8. Kools are smoked in the yellow house.
9. Milk is drunk in the middle house.
10. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
11. The man who smokes Chesterfields lives in the house next to the man with the fox.
12. Kools are smoked in the house next to the house where the horse is kept.
13. The Lucky Strike smoker drinks orange juice.
14. The Japanese smokes Parliaments.
15. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.

Now, who drinks water? Who owns the zebra? In the interest of clarity, it must be added that each of the five houses is painted a different color, and their inhabitants are of different national extractions, own different pets, drink different beverages and smoke different brands of American cigarets [sic]. One other thing: in statement 6, right means your right.

– Life International, December 17, 1962

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_Puzzle

There are a few ways to solve this. I stuck to cross-referencing and process of elimination. I drew five houses as a visual aid. I'm a visual thinker. Here's my answer and workings to the puzzle:


I filled in the info under the respective houses as I go along. I'm very methodical. I prefer to solve by category. The first category I solved was the house colours, followed by the nationalities. The two blanks missing in the above illustration are the 'water' and 'zebra'. (:


My lines of reasoning! :D The order in which I used the clues is different from the solution in the Wikipedia page. Kinda interesting to know so many methods can be used to derive the same answer.


Ta-dah! The final answers. I've a habit of drawing a hex after every logic puzzle I complete. My sudoku book is full of them. Don't we all use a hex to mark our final answers when doing maths questions? That's where my habit stems from!

There are variations of the original puzzle too. I gave the children's variation a shot. They edited minor stuff like the nationalities and substituted the cigarette brands with snacks (lol), and the clues are slightly different. And there is only 1 unknown in this puzzle instead of the original 2.

Source: http://www.increasebrainpower.com/einsteins-riddle.html


As you can see, I tried using the 5 x 5 table to solve the puzzle. This other method is effective. But it didn't work for me. Still prefer my colourful houses!

Here's the answer for the children's variation:


I'm curious about the MBTI types of the people who have solved this puzzle, whether they have a Thinking/Feeling and Judgement/Perception in particular, and how it affects their level of rationality. My MBTI type is the same as Einstein and my favourite psychologist, Carl Jung: INTP. With an INTP, it's all about logic, logic, and more logic! (:

CHARMAINE CHEONG.

I’m a somebody and a nobody. I’m rational and emotional. I’m critical but I’m non-judgemental.

I like my things categorized by types and chronologically. I like taking photos to preserve the moments of my life. I like dystopian literature. I like reading Wikipedia articles at random. I like travelling to foreign lands and seeing the world. I like long conversations over good food. I like pop and classical music. I like guitars. I like cats. I like writing random, mushy letters and notes to the people important to me. I have a whole long list of things that I like, but you’ve got to get to know me better to know them all.