Had seen it before, but long ago forgot the answer. Solved it again.
The answer is:
HRT,SMISO
(In order not to spoil it for the would-be-solvers, I transposed all of the characters one keyspace to the right, and added some dummy characters so that length wouldn’t indicate it. Ain’t I a nice guy?)
I hate it when people give the answer without explaining WHY it’s the answer. Knowing it’s the German isn’t interesting; it’s knowing how you get that answer. If you screwed up somewhere while trying the puzzle, and can’t find where, it’s especially frustrating. So here is the explanation. I’m not spoiling anything, because there’s no secret trick to give away here; this explanation will only make sense if you follow it along, anyway, and that is easily avoided.
Make five rows and head them “Nationality”, “Pet”, “Drink”, “Smoke”, and “Color”. Now fill in the chart as follows.
i) From 9, the Norwegian is in the first house.
ii)From 14, the second house is blue.
iii) From 4, the green and white houses are either third and fourth or fourth and fifth.
iv) From 1 and iii, the Norwegian lives in the yellow house.
v) From 7, the Norwegian smokes Dunhill.
vi) From 11, the second house holds horses.
vii) From 5, the green house serves coffee.
viii) By elimination via 3,8, and 12, the Norwegian drinks water.
ix) From iii and 8, the middle house serves milk.
x) By elimination, the third house is red (and from iii the green and white houses are fourth and fifth).
xi) By 1, the middle house contains the Brit.
xii) By 15, the second house smokes Blend.
xiii) By 12, the fifth house smokes Blue Master and serves beer.
xiv) By 3, the Dane is in the second house and serves tea.
xv) By 13, the German is in the fourth house and smokes Prince.
xvi) By 2, the Swede is in the fifth house and keeps dogs.
xvii) By 6, the Brit smokes Pall Mall and keeps birds.
xviii) By 10, the Norwegian keeps cats.
By elimination, if anyone keeps fish, it’s the German, in the green, fourth house, drinking coffee and smoking Princes and murdering Professor Plum in his library with the candlestick.
Actually, for a logic problem, this is pretty sorry. You (as the problem solver) have to make the assumption that someone has fish as pets…but they don’t actually tell you that fish are one of the pets that are owned. I always hated those types of problems. If you expect me to sit down and solve it, then you need to be sure and word it clearly.
I’d say “fish” really stands for “all pets excluding cats, horses, birds and dogs” in this case.
Anyway, I managed to solve it in about 10 minutes. Is that any good? I mean, just stating that I’m in the top 15% of all smart people just isn’t enough for me
Ya, I know what they meant, but I’m of the opinion, that a logic problem should be logical. And not require the solver to make assumptions. Of course I used to get irritated in my Algebra class doing word problems too.
Teacher:“In our School, there are 173 students total, of those, 86 are taking Biology and Physics in the first semester, and 64 are taking Biology and Geology in the second semester. How many total student are taking Biology?”
Me:“That problem can’t be answered with the information given”
Teacher:"Sure it can let x=students taking Biology
(86 - x)+(69-x)=173
Then solve for x
Me:"Nooooo…the problem doesn’t state that they are taking either one or the other of the two science classes per semester, it says they are taking both of them.
Teacher :(with long suffering sigh) “Just solve for x Kris”
(My fiance just had a problem similar to this while studying for one of her teaching exams…I’m still irritated about it)
-I checked all the descriptions for pets mentioned. If there were 5 different kinds of pets and none of them were fish, the answer would have been “no one”. However, there are only 4 different types of pets, and nothing to indicate that fish must be the fifth one. Therefore, the answer is clearly “not enough information”.
Ladies and gentlemen, that is logic. Don’t make assumptions. Only use the information you are given. A good logic puzzle always has all the information that is necessary to solve it.
It feels good to be in the 15%. Yeah, I did it exactly how APB explained it. I feel so special that I’ll go to sleep to commend myself…yeah.
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.”
-H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”
There are only four types of pets mentioned. You can’t possibly get any answers but not enough info. I do these all the time and even if the clue is obscure, there are always the correct amount of pets or cigarettes or what to match the number of people mentioned in the introduction portion.
When are you going to realize being normal isn’t necessarily a good thing?
