If Einstein was right that only 2 percent of the world's population could solve his logic puzzle, then that says a lot about the readers of The Dawn Treader.
You all are a bright bunch.
Paul was the winner. He answered correctly at 9:59 am. That was quick.
The question was, who owns the fish?
The Prince-smoking, coffee-drinking, German who lives in the 4th house on the steet, a green house, is the one who owns the fish.
I can tell a lot of my readers are in IT. They recognized that a matrix (like MS Excel) was the best way to solve this puzzle. Set up a 5 by 5 matrix and start filling it out. A lot of the data fills out straight from the clues. Inference is required to fill in the rest. Eventually, one empty cell is left. It is the pet cell belonging to the German.
The turning point is figuring out that the Norwegian in the first house drinks water. It has to be this way because the dweller in house #3 drinks milk and house #4 drinks coffee. Because it was given that the dweller in house #1 smoked Dunhill, clue #12 (smokes Blue Master and drinks beer) drove me to deduce that the beer drinker had to be in either house #2 or house #4. If the beer drinker was in house #2, the tea drinker was in house #5 and the water drinker in house #1. If the beer drinker was in house #4, then the tea drinker was in house #2 and the water drinker in house #1. Either way, the Norwegian had to be the water drinker. Once I knew that, I knew the dweller in house #2 was the Blends smoker (clue #15). The puzzle was quickly solved after that break through.
Well done Paul. Considering I submitted my answer 68 minutes after you, and that it took me Bout 45 minutes to do the puzzle, your answer was already awaiting moderation before I saw the post. You're a quick one!
Posted by: Jim | September 22, 2007 at 13:56
The only downside of this fun is that success depends to some extent on when you see the post :)
Posted by: Paul | September 22, 2007 at 16:42
Nice logic. . . .
One problem, though: if you look at how you set up the 'rules' of the puzzle, together with the 'givens' , you will see that there is no information given about a fish.
The question ABOUT a fish requires you to infer that the otherwise unidentified 5th pet IS a fish. But that would be to "assume a fact not in evidence."
Posted by: prophet | September 22, 2007 at 17:07
I still think it's a flawed riddle. Everyone knows the German would drink beer...
Posted by: tgirsch | September 24, 2007 at 00:09
This is "IT solution" :)))
$v){ echo "\t".$p.'-'.implode(',',array_keys($v)); } echo "\n"; }} function drem($t,$v){ global $dum; $res = false; for($i=1;$i1); if($c[2] == 'H') $dum[$c[3]][$c[0]]=array($c[1]=>1); } do { $end=1; foreach($dum as $props){ foreach($props as $n => $p){ if(count($p) == 1){ if(drem($n, implode('',array_keys($p)))){ $end = 0; } } } } foreach($dum as $co => $props){ foreach($props as $typ => $vals){ foreach ($vals as $val => $one) { $found = 0; foreach($dum as $co2 => $props2){ foreach($props2 as $typ2 => $vals2){ foreach ($vals2 as $val2 => $one) { if($val == $val2 && $co != $co2) $found = 1; }}} if(!$found){ $dum[$co][$typ] = array($val => 1);} }}} foreach($conds as $c){ if($c[0] == 'H' || $c[2] == 'H') continue; for($i=1;$i
Posted by: fbumake | September 26, 2007 at 23:39