Einstein's Riddle + Solution

about 1 year ago

Try solving the following puzzle before looking at the solution!

Einstein's Riddle

A rare fish has been stolen from an aquarium. The police have traced the fish to a street with 5 houses. They can't search all at once and if they search one, the thief will know they are on his trail and run away. The police hire you as a detective to solve the case.

The police give you the following information:

Each house owner is a different nationality: German, Dane, Norwegian, Swede, and Brit.
Each house owner drinks a different beverage: milk, tea, coffee, water, and root beer.
Each house owner smokes a different type of cigar: Dunhill, Blends, Pall Mall, Prince, and Blue Master.
Each house interior walls are painted a different color: yellow, red, white, green, and blue.
Each house contains a different animal: cat, horse, bird, dog, and fish.

You are able to gather the following list of clues:

The Brit lives in the house with red walls.
The Swede has a dog.
The Dane drinks tea.
The house with green walls is directly to the left of the house with white walls.
The owner of the house with green walls drinks coffee.
The person who smokes Pall Mall cigars owns a bird.
The owner of the house with yellow walls smokes Dunhill cigars.
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 cat owner.
The horse's owner lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
The man who smokes Blue Master drinks root beer.
The German smokes Prince.
The Norwegian lives next to the house with blue walls.
The man who smokes Blends has a next-door neighbor who drinks water.

Now it is up to you to solve for the house with the fish!

HINT: Make a 5x5 table with house number vs house information to help organize your investigation.

Source: https://mes.fm/puzzles/einsteins-riddle

Einstein's Riddle.jpeg

Solution

Although this riddle is attributed to Einstein, supposedly there is no known evidence that confirms this.

Solving this riddle is made easier by making a 5x5 table with the houses as columns and the house attributes as rows, as in the solution image below.

Then we can use the clues to fill in the table in the following sequential order:

Clue 8: House 3 drinks milk.
Clue 9: House 1 has the Norwegian.
Clue 14: House 2 has blue walls.
Clues 5 and 4: House 4 has green walls and drinks coffee; House 5 has white walls.
Clue 1: House 3 has the Brit and red walls; House 1 has yellow walls.
Clue 7: House 1 has Dunhill cigars.
Clue 11: House 2 has a horse.
Clues 3 and 12: House 1 has water.
Clue 15: House 2 has Blends cigars.
Clue 12: House 5 has Blue Master cigars and root beer; House 2 has tea.
Clue 13: House 4 has the German and Prince cigars; House 3 has Pall Mall cigars; House 5 has the Swede.
Clue 6: House 3 has a bird.
Clue 2: House 5 has a dog.
Clue 10: House 1 has a cat; House 4 has the fish!

Thus, by process of elimination, the German in the green walled house 4 stole the fish!

Notes:

Einstein's Riddle (or Einstein's Puzzle) is also called the Zebra Puzzle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_Puzzle
This riddle was taken from this Ted video: https://ed.ted.com/lessons/can-you-solve-einstein-s-riddle-dan-van-der-vieren#watch