Saturday, November 24, 2007

Einstein's Intelligence Quiz

Einstein's Intelligence Quiz
http://www.business.uiuc.edu/broker/iq.htm

Einstein wrote this quiz last century. He said that 98% of the people in the world cannot solve the quiz.

There are 5 houses in 5 different colors
In each house lives a person with a different nationality
These 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 drink.
Here's the question: Who owns the fish?

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 middle drinks milk
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house
10. The man who smokes Blend lives next door to the one who keeps cats.
11. The man who keeps horses lives next door 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

With these 15 clues the problem is solvable.
Here's the question: Who owns the fish?

You can read the technique to solve this quiz (within 10 minutes) from this webpage: http://www.tankinlian.com/quiz/index.html

16 comments:

Tan Kin Lian said...

I took me 30 minutes to solve this puzzle on my first attempt.

Later, I tried to solve this puzzle about 10 times. I have now learned the short cut method to solve this type of puzzle.

With this method, I will be able to solve similar puzzles in the future with much less time, about 10 minutes to do a new puzzle of this kind.

Lesson: Learn the method.

Anonymous said...

The Norwegian?

Cherlek said...

German

Anonymous said...

I did a quick one on this... I got German keeping the fish. The German stays in the green house, drinks coffee, smokes Prince and keeps fish. Is that correct?

What I did was to lay out each of the 5 options for Nationality, Color, Drink, Smoke and Pet, draw the links and go through them iteratively with a constraint that a full chain cannot overlap each other. Going thru the chain 3-4 times should link everything up.

Haven't tried solving it a second time to verify the answers though...

Anonymous said...

Just verified that it should be correct... Would like to cross-check with you though:-

1. Norwegian - Yellow - Water - Dunhill - Cats
2. Dane - Blue - Tea - Blend - Horses
3. Brit - Red - Milk - PallMall - Birds
4. German - Green - Coffee - Prince - Fish
5. Swede - White - Beer - Blue Master - Dogs

They live in that order.

Anonymous said...

5 mins...is the answer the German?

Tan Kin Lian said...

Congratulations to Cherlek, Jeremy and anonymous (5 mins). Wow, you guys are great.

Send an a-mail to me. I like to learn how you can solve them so fast.

stefi said...

I solve it in 15 mins. The German has the goldfish. Use a 5x5 table and fill in slots. Very interesting.

Anonymous said...

I took much longer, about 1.5 hours, using the method of tabulating all the clues.

There is an interesting argument on the web, we can't confirm that the German actually owns the fish, we only know that the German owns a pet that's not mentioned in the clues and we assume it's the fish, which is not necessarily true. :)

Anonymous said...

I think this is good training for those in investigative work in crime, fraud, etc and how to piece together the puzzle quickly using the right method. If you use the right method, a world of difference in time taken to solve it.
Also it stimulates the mind, maybe can delay mind problems of aging.

Anonymous said...

wow, how you guys solve it that fast? I took about 1 hr to solve it.

Anonymous said...

I took around 1 hr to solve it, using excel worksheet to form the 5x5 table.

How you guys solve the puzzle so fast?

Collin said...

Using the traditional method of pen and pencil.

Draw out 5 column and slowly add in the variables. Then eliminate with some thinking.

Took about 30min though.

Priyadi said...

took me 20 minutes to solve it. using a spreadsheet like mr. tan did.

Tan Kin Lian said...

Can the person who did the puzzle in 5 minutes contact me? You must be great!

Send an email to kinlian@gmail.com

Anonymous said...

5 min it is the greman

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