The Thinking Blog ~ Knowledge Grows When Shared

Supposedly, Albert Einstein wrote this riddle as a boy, and said 98% of the world could not solve it. There are no tricks, pure logic will get you the correct answer. And yes, there is enough information to arrive at the one and only correct answer. Which percentage are you in?

There are 5 houses in 5 different colors. In each house lives a man with a different nationality. The 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 beverage.

The question is: "Who owns the fish?"

Hints:

• The Brit lives in the red house.
• The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
• The Dane drinks tea.
• The green house is on the left of the white house.
• The green house's owner drinks coffee.
• The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
• The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
• The man living in the center house drinks milk.
• The Norwegian lives in the first house.
• The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
• The man who keeps the horse lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
• The owner who smokes Bluemasters drinks beer.
• The German smokes Prince.
• The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
• The man who smokes Blends has a neighbor who drinks water.

Unless you are a genius, you might want to look at an example methodology to solve the riddle. If you get the correct answer, congratulations, you are one of the exclusive group of 121,348,731 people in the world who can!

Enjoy solving riddles? Get busy with Da Vinci’s Other Code.