How to solve the “Einstein’s riddle” (which supposedly only 2% of the population can solve)

The so-called “Einstein’s riddle”, which supposedly only 2% of the population can solve, is in turn surrounded by riddles.

There are no verified sources, scientific studies or anything like that about the riddle being proposed by Einstein and about the fact that 98% of humanity is not able to solve it. But the truth is that the riddle, with all its additions, has spread like wildfire on the Internet, some of the media, and has even been quoted by Stanford University.

What does the riddle say?

The approach gives 15 clues about a street with five houses. Each of the same color, each tenant of nationality, with a different talisman, drink and brand of tobacco. And her solution is to figure out who owns the fish, knowing that:

1.- The British live in the red house

2.- The Swede has a dog

3.- The Dane drinks tea

4.- Norwegian lives in the first house

5.- The German smokes the prince

6. The green house is to the left of the white one.

7.- In the green house you drink coffee

8. Whoever smokes Pall Mall has birds.

9.- Dunhill smoke in the yellow house

10.- Milk is drunk in the house in the center

11.- Whoever smokes Mixtures lives next to the one who has a cat.

12. Whoever has a horse lives next door to someone who smokes Dunhill.

13.- Whoever smokes Bluemaster drinks beer

14.- The one who smokes mixtures lives next to the one who drinks water.

15.- Norwegian lives next to the blue house

Myth of 2%

Now we need to take a break from the article, which I will use to encourage you to stop reading and try to solve it. It is not true that only 2% of humanity can solve it. If you think it is appropriate, save this article for later, take a pencil and paper and try it.

With that said, we proceed with the solution. There’s a graphical way to solve the puzzle… with PowerPoint!

If you started to understand, then you may have guessed that we need to fill in the table using clues in order to finally find out who has the fish. We’re on the right track, but instead of a board, let me call it a board.

So it’s time to insert rectangles into a blank PowerPoint sheet until we have something like this:

We will also put all the available “cards”, regardless of the order at the moment, just as they appear. We’ll have something like this (note this is NOT a solution, I recommend copying the empty board onto another slide to fill it in later):

And now the crux of the matter: we are going to use the button Group to link the cards to the clues we have. When two shapes are grouped in PowerPoint, they merge and move as one (I use the Control select both):

So we group, knowing that clue 1 says “The British live in the red house”, and remove these cards from the board:

We continue the same with lanes 2 and 3, moving the cards so that they remain in the appropriate row and column (note that you can also help with the button bring to Front). The Swede has a dog and the Dane drinks tea:

Tip 4 is even easier because if it says “Norwegian lives in the first house” we can add it directly to our final decision board:

We repeat the operation Group with tracks 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 leaving something like this:

Clue 10 (“Leche is drunk in the house in the center”) goes straight to the last board:

With track 11 (“Who smokes Blends, he lives next to the cat”), you need to be more careful: the “cat” goes next to “Blends”, but on which side? You will have to leave two possible options on the board (left or right):

In order not to forget that both options are the same combination, I left it with a yellow background:

The same goes for lane 12 (one horse next to Dunhill) and the fact that Dunhill is already tucked up with the yellow house is not a problem: he returns to the board to keep his distance:

At this point, for 13, it doesn’t take much effort to say Bluemaster is coming to beer:

But you should take a close look at 14: “He who smokes Blends lives next to the one who drinks water.” With Blends, we already had two options in the yellow box. The one who drinks water can be on either side, so four possibilities arise:

And finally, 15 (“the Norwegian lives next to the blue house”) advances to the final board:

After all the clues have been analyzed (if you look closely, the fish does not appear on any), we proceed to the “games”, looking for where they fit. To do this, we display the final board on the first slide (or vice versa, I will not tell you how to play):

And now try. We will add those that have only one option. For example, Pall Mall-Birds or British-Red fit in several places, while Green-White-Brown fits in only one:

This leaves us with only one option for “British – Red”, so go ahead!

And the Color gap should be “yellow”, of which there were two options. Since there can’t be anything on the left, this would be the best choice:

We just got to the point where things get complicated, especially if you’re trying to work it out with pencil and paper. Now all groupings have several options. We’re left with what Sudoku lovers call archer’s luck: making assumptions. For example, that “beer – Bluemaster” goes in the blue house:

This leaves us with only the options “Danish – tea” in the white house and “German – coffee” in the green:

But be careful, because then we will have nowhere to put the “Swedish dog”. Therefore, the blue house beer hypothesis is false, which implies that it must go to the white house. Let’s walk again…

And now yes, we can fill like this:

And pay attention, because… we just made a winning move! Habemus is the owner of the fish.

Finally, who has the fish?

If you said you were a German living in a green house where you drank coffee and smoked a prince, then congratulations! I hope you enjoyed it and I encourage you to challenge your friends to try and solve the problem.

Mysterious greeting.

José Maria Manzano Crespo, Professor of Systems and Automation at Loyola University of Andalusia

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.

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