Posted on 06/21/2003 2:29:23 PM PDT by gitmo
There are 5 houses, each is a different colour
In each house lives a person of a different nationality.
These 5 owners all drink a certain beverage, smoke a certain brand of cigar and keep a certain pet.
No owner has the same pet, smokes the same brand of cigar or drinks the same drink as another owner.
1: The Briton lives in a red house.
2: The Swede keeps dogs as pets
3: The Dane drinks tea
4: The green house is on the left of the white house (they are also next door to each other)
5: The green house owner drinks coffee
6: The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds
7: The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill
8: The man living in the house right in the center drinks milk
9: The Norwegian lives in the first house
10: The man who smokes Blend lives next to the one who keeps cats
11: The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill
12: The owner who smokes Blue Master drinks beer
13: The German smokes Prince
14: The Norwegian lives next to the blue house
15: The man who smokes Blend has a neighbor who drinks water.
The question is: WHO KEEPS FISH?
But who owns the red house?
Now where's my application for MENSA?
My dad had been scout master when my brother, who is 8 years older than I am, was in scouts, so they warned me about snipe hunts prior to my first camping trip. I came prepared. I brought a wind up bird and waited for about 15 minutes, until the older kids (read 13 or 14) had figured I was well and truly lost. I then wandered back into the campfire with the paperbag I had been given kicking and bucking like mad. I don't know what they think I had, but it scared them to death. That group of kids never tried anything like that on me again.
You know the Norwegian lives in the first house (#9) and that the house next to the Norwegian is blue (#14). So, the second house is the blue one. The green & white house are next to one another (#4). Since the guy in the middle drinks milk (#8), that can't be the green house owner who drinks coffee (#5). The green house then has to be fourth in order to be on the left of the white house, which is fifth.
That leaves red or yellow for the first and middle houses, so the middle must be the Briton's red house (#1), since the Norwegian is in the first house (#9), which therefore must be the yellow house.
Since the owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill (#7), you know the man who keeps horses lives in the second house (#11). This means the Swede lives in either the fourth or fifth house, since he keeps dogs (#2). At this point, you already know the Dane lives in either the second or fifth house, since he drinks tea (#3). So, you just put the Dane in the fifth house, which forces the Swede into the fourth house. When you see that the statements don't work out, you know the Dane must be in the second house.
Everything then falls into place.
I've done these puzzles before, and don't generally care for them. In some of the IMHO more interesting ones, though, not everything is solvable but the particular question asked, is. On the other hand, there's a fine line between puzzles that require insight and those that require frustrating amounts of trial and error.
not to be Clintonian but ... first on the left or first on the right ?
doesn't affect the answer to the question, but the overall total grid can be different.
How about the fact that someone kept fish as a pet rather than as catfood?
It's not quite a given, but it's close.
We know there are five houses in total. Yellow, Blue, Red, [Green, and White].
The first house in not the Brits (clue 9) therefore it is not red. the second house is blue (clue 14), the green and white house are adjacent,(clue 4) but the green house drinks coffee so the third house cannot be green(clue 8). This means the first house is yellow and the third is red, and the fourth and fifth houses are green and white respectively.
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