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Before he turned physics upside down,
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a young Albert Einstein supposedly showed off his genius
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by devising a complex riddle involving this list of clues.
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Can you resist tackling a brain teaser
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written by one of the smartest people in history?
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Let's give it a shot.
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The world's rarest fish has been stolen from the city aquarium.
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The police have followed the scent to a street with five identical looking houses.
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But they can't search all the houses at once,
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and if they pick the wrong one, the thief will know they're on his trail.
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It's up to you, the city's best detective, to solve the case.
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When you arrive on the scene, the police tell you what they know.
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One:
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each house's owner is of a different nationality,
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drinks a different beverage,
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and smokes a different type of cigar.
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Two:
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each house's interior walls are painted a different color.
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Three:
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each house contains a different animal, one of which is the fish.
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After a few hours of expert sleuthing, you gather some clues.
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It may look like a lot of information,
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but there's a clear logical path to the solution.
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Solving the puzzle will be a lot like Sudoku,
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so you may find it helpful to organize your information in a grid, like this.
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Pause the video on the following screen to examine your clues and solve the riddle.
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Answer in: 3
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2
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1
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To start, you fill in the information from clues eight and nine.
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Immediately, you also realize that since the Norwegian is at the end of the street,
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there's only one house next to him,
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which must be the one with the blue walls in clue fourteen.
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Clue five says the green-walled house's owner drinks coffee.
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It can't be the center house since you already know its owner drinks milk,
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but it also can't be the second house, which you know has blue walls.
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And since clue four says
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the green-walled house must be directly to the left of the white-walled one,
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it can't be the first or fifth house either.
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The only place left for the green-walled house
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with the coffee drinker is the fourth spot,
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meaning the white-walled house is the fifth.
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Clue one gives you a nationality and a color.
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Since the only column missing both these values is the center one,
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this must be the Brit's red-walled home.
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Now that the only unassigned wall color is yellow,
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this must be applied to the first house,
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where clue seven says the Dunhill smoker lives.
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And clue eleven tells you that the owner of the horse is next door,
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which can only be the second house.
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The next step is to figure out what the Norwegian in the first house drinks.
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It can't be tea, clue three tells you that's the Dane.
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As per clue twelve, it can't be root beer since that person smokes Bluemaster,
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and since you already assigned milk and coffee,
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it must be water.
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From clue fifteen,
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you know that the Norwegian's neighbor, who can only be in the second house,
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smokes Blends.
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Now that the only spot in the grid without a cigar and a drink
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is in the fifth column,
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that must be the home of the person in clue twelve.
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And since this leaves only the second house without a drink,
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the tea-drinking Dane must live there.
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The fourth house is now the only one missing a nationality and a cigar brand,
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so the Prince-smoking German from clue thirteen must live there.
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Through elimination, you can conclude that the Brit smokes Pall Mall
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and the Swede lives in the fifth house,
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while clue six and clue two tell you
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that these two have a bird and a dog, respectively.
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Clue ten tells you that the cat owner lives next to the Blend-smoking Dane,
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putting him in the first house.
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Now with only one spot left on the grid,
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you know that the German in the green-walled house must be the culprit.
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You and the police burst into the house,
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catching the thief fish-handed.
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While that explanation was straightforward,
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solving puzzles like this often involves false starts and dead ends.
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Part of the trick is to use the process of elimination
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and lots of trial and error to hone in on the right pieces,
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and the more logic puzzles you solve,
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the better your intuition will be
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for when and where there's enough information to make your deductions.
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And did young Einstein really write this puzzle?
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Probably not.
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There's no evidence he did,
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and some of the brands mentioned are too recent.
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But the logic here is not so different
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from what you'd use to solve equations with multiple variables,
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even those describing the nature of the universe.
