How smart are you(we)?

This test has been around for a long time and I'm sure that there are many of us that have seen it before. If so, please don't divulge where it came from for a few days so everyone that hasn't seen it has a chance to give it a whirl.

I saw this for the first time today and gave it a go. Took 15 minutes. It has been said that a great percent of the population can not answer it correctly. Lets prove them wrong.

Give it a try. If you get an answer please don't post it. Just post how lnog it took you to solve it. I'll post the answer Sunday evening if I can remember. I'm getting old ya know. If I forget ya'll are welcome to post the answer after say 7pm EST Sunday 12/6/09.

Thanks for playing along.

Here's the test:

There's only one solution for this problem.

There are 5 houses of 5 different colors.
In each house lives a person of a different nationality.
Those 5 people drink different drinks, smoke cigarettes of a different brand and have a different pet.
None of them has the same pet, smokes the same cigarette or drinks the same drink.
Question: Who has the fish?

Hints:

The englishman lives in the red house.
The swedish has a dog as a pet.
The Dane drinks tea.
The green house is at the left side of the white one.
The person who lives at the green house drinks coffee.
The person who smokes Pall Mall raises birds.
The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
The man that lives in the house that is in the middle drinks milk.
The norwegian lives in the first house.
The man that smokes Blends lives next to the one that has cats.
The man that raises horses lives next to the one that smokes Dunhill.
The man that smokes Bluemaster drinks beer.
The german smokes Prince.
The norwegian lives next to the blue house.
The man that smokes Blends is neighbour of the one that drinks water.

Do give it a go before looking for the answer somewhere else.

Good luck!!

I believe this is Einsteins problem. He is said to have said that only 2% of people in the world are smart enough to solve it.

I did it a long time a ago by drawing out a table, but don't want to do it all again now...

PM sent about an hour ago.

Making a table helps. I actually needed two tables -- one to construct the "answer" (who/what goes with which house) and one to represent relationships. The relationships can then be looked at to see where in the answer table they fit. Look for a sure thing, put it in the answer table, then another sure thing will show up. Actually I sometimes needed to lightly pencil in a couple of hypotheticals then something would come along that made only one of the hypotheticals possible.

I'm dumb as a post... besides that there is too much second hand smoke in that neighborhood. My guess is the fish would have died a long time ago. :beer2:

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Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

I'm dumb as a post... besides that there is too much second hand smoke in that neighborhood. My guess is the fish would have died a long time ago. :beer2:

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LOL, I have two dogs and two parakeets that don't seem to mind the smoke, especially cigars. The chocolate lab actually enjoys a good cigar with me!

Besides, the question doesn't state that the fish is alive!

TexasBob got the answer in 20 minutes. Thanks for not posting the answer.

I like puzzles. As a Systems Analyst I get mental puzzles all day, day in and day out. I thought this one was fun!

OK here's a dumb one.

If a chicken and a half
lays an egg and a half
in a day and a half
how long does it take a dozen chickens
to lay a dozen eggs?

it's a glorified sudoku, my time to solve it was 26min 47s, and in the past I've done 3 sudoku puzzles.

I found an answer, but didn't remember to time myself. But I think it took a bit over 20 minutes, went a lot quicker once I found a system :)
PM sent

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TexasBob

OK here's a dumb one.

If a chicken and a half
lays an egg and a half
in a day and a half
how long does it take a dozen chickens
to lay a dozen eggs?

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1500 beats, and don't tell me you've stopped beating your chicken...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Joed

LOL, I have two dogs and two parakeets that don't seem to mind the smoke, especially cigars.

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Talking of parakeets: try typing "why won't my" in google and take a look on the first suggestion:roflmao

if a man is running a marathon and he passes the guy in second place, what place is he in now?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by nessmuck

if a man is running a marathon and he passes the guy in second place, what place is he in now?

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The man he passed is now in third place.

Whenever a smart person confronts me with a puzzle to test my intellectual mettle, I employ a time honored strategy.... I scratch myself for a while, go take a dump and forget about it. Later, I might get angry and try to harm the smart person but usually I'm too distracted.

My brain hurts now. I'm going to bed.

It took me 56 minutes :p

Congrats to those of you that solved the question. To those of you that gave it a try and couldn't get the answer, thanks for trying. Einstein wrote this test and said that 98% of the people can't solve it... I don't believe it is a question of how smart a person is but rather how a person thinks. When I was in high school and collage I took numerous aptitude test for no see where I fit in the computer field. The tests didn't have any computer questions but more logic and reasoning. That was a long time ago.

For people reading this post in the future I won't put the answer in here so they can try the test w/o a spoiler. Here is where I found the question and it has a link to the answer: :: Quantnotes.com :: Edutainment ::
Hope you all enjoyed the challenge!

Interesting test. It kept me up until 1:30am on Friday night and I'm not ashamed to say I didn't solve it prior to looking up the answer.

Without "giving anything away" to anyone else I was able to determine everything except where the Dane, Swede or German lived, who had cats, who drank water, who smoked the Pall Malls and the Bluemaster. Especially with the cats, there seemed to be no relation I could pin down whatsoever. It was a fun challenge anyway.

Chris L

I shit you not, I got this in under 3 minutes. I read the question, read the comments while thinking of it, heard it was Einsteins question, and immediately guessed who had the fish.



Does this make me smart or jump-to-conclusionly?

I did this a few years ago, I can't remember how long it took, 10-20 minutes I think.

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Originally Posted by JokiJo

I shit you not, I got this in under 3 minutes. I read the question, read the comments while thinking of it, heard it was Einsteins question, and immediately guessed who had the fish.



Does this make me smart or jump-to-conclusionly?

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You're smarter than I am. As soon as I realized who it was, I groaned

It took me about 10 minutes. A simple table 5x5 table is all you really need to do this. There is only one way the table can be filled without violating at least one of the statements. The question itself is not perfect, however, in that it requires an assumption as to the correct location of the first house (right or left).

It took me half an hour to construct a table. And it was probably inferior since I found myself having to go back and doublecheck where I had missed entering clues

Once I applied the Gordian technique to solving the issue, it moved along rather quickly.

The answer is simple and it took me less than three seconds to answer it. Unfortunately there is not enough room in the margin to write it down.

James.

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Originally Posted by Jimbo

The answer is simple and it took me less than three seconds to answer it. Unfortunately there is not enough room in the margin to write it down.

James.

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Well that's the last straw! No more conjectures for you!

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Originally Posted by TexasBob

Well that's the last straw! No more conjectures for you!

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I assure you, Sir, that someone of my intellect does not conjecture! I only deal in Theorems.

:D

James.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jimbo

I assure you, Sir, that someone of my intellect does not conjecture! I only deal in Theorems.

:D

James.

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Well, I guess we no longer need to take your word on that, although I'd hoped you might have been a little more concise!

I think I've figured it out. I'm going to give this to my students.

No, either I or Einstien are wrong. I'll have to try again.

I doubt that Einstien formulated this puzzle as he would certainly have been more precise in his statements. As I mentioned earlier, the problem is not clearly stated as it requires an assumption on the part of the solver. If you get this assumption correct, the solution is fairly straight forward, if you get it wrong, the problem cannot be solved. Fortunately for those of use in the Western world, the correct assumption is the one most of us will make. This is not necessarily so for non-western solvers.

This morning I finally solved it. Once I had sat down and worked on the problem for the second time it worked itself out in about ten minutes (that is not counting the two days I have spent thinking about it).

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Originally Posted by ndw76

This morning I finally solved it. Once I had sat down and worked on the problem for the second time it worked itself out in about ten minutes (that is not counting the two days I have spent thinking about it).

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It's a great mental exercise. You have to come at it from several angles at once.

This is what I came up with and I think it's right.