The so-called “Einstein riddle”, the one that supposedly only 2% of the population can solve, is, in turn, surrounded by enigmas.
On whether it was Einstein who proposed the riddle and on the fact that 98% of humanity is not capable of solving it, there are no verifiable sources, scientific studies, or anything similar. But the truth is that the enigma, with all its additions, has spread like wildfire on the internet, by some media and has even been cited by Stanford University.
What does the riddle say?
In the approach, 15 clues are given about a street in which there are five houses. Each one of a color, each tenant of a nationality, with a different mascot, drink and brand of tobacco. And solving it consists of finding 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.- The Norwegian lives in the first house
5.- The German smokes Prince
6.- The green house is just to the left of the white one
7.- In the green house you drink coffee
8.- Whoever smokes Pall Mall has birds
9.- Dunhill is smoked in the yellow house
10.- In the house in the center they drink milk
11.- Whoever smokes Blends lives next to whoever has a cat
12.- Whoever has a horse lives next door to whoever smokes Dunhill
13.- Whoever smokes Bluemaster drinks beer
14.- Whoever smokes Blends lives next to whoever drinks water
15.- The Norwegian lives next to the blue house
The 2% Myth
Now we have to take a break in the article, which I take advantage of to encourage you to stop reading and try to solve it. It is false that only 2% of humanity can solve it. If you deem it appropriate, leave this article for later, grab a pencil and paper, and try.
With that said, we continue with the solution. There is a graphical way to solve the puzzle… using PowerPoint!
If you’ve started to figure it out, you may have guessed that we need to fill in a table, using the clues, to finally find out who has a fish. We’re on the right track, but instead of a board, let me call it a board.
Therefore, it is time to insert rectangles in a blank PowerPoint sheet, until we have something like this:
We will also put all the available “cards”, regardless of order for now, simply as they appear. We will have something like this (note, this is NOT the solution, I recommend copying the blank 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 with the clues we have. When two shapes are grouped in PowerPoint, they merge and move as one (I use the key Control to select both):
Thus, we group knowing that clue 1 says: “The British live in the red house”, and we remove those cards from the board:
We continue the same with tracks 2 and 3, moving the cards to keep them in the corresponding 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:
Hint 4 is even easier, because if it says that “The Norwegian lives in the first house”, we can add it directly to our final solution board:
We are repeating 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”) skips directly to the final board:
With track 11 (“Whoever smokes Blends lives next to a cat”) you have to be more careful: “cat” goes next to “Blends”, but which side? We will have to leave the two possible options (left or right) on the board:
In order not to forget that the two options are of the same combination, I have left it with a yellow background:
The same goes for track 12 (one horse next to Dunhill), and the fact that Dunhill was already grouped with yellow house is not a problem: it is returned to the board to maintain distance:
At this point, for 13 to say that Bluemaster goes with beer does not require much effort:
But you do have to take a good look at 14: “Whoever smokes Blends lives next to whoever drinks water.” With ‘Blends’ we already had two options in the yellow box. Whoever drinks water can be on one side or the other, so four possibilities arise:
And finally 15 (“the Norwegian lives next to the blue house”) goes to the final board:
Once all the clues have been analyzed (if you look closely, the fish does not appear on any), we proceed to “play” with seeing where they fit. To do this, we bring the final board to the first slide (or vice versa, I won’t be the one to say how to play):
And now to try. We will be adding those that only have one option. For example, the groupings “Pall Mall – birds” or “British – red” fit in several places, but “green – white – brown” only in one:
That only leaves us with one option for “british – red”, so get in there!
And the Color gap has to be “yellow”, of which there were two options. Since there can be nothing to the left, it will be the top choice:
We just got to the point where things get complicated, especially if you tried to solve it with pencil and paper. Now all groupings have several options. All we are left with is what Sudoku aficionados call archer’s luck: making assumptions. For example, that “beer – Bluemaster” goes in the blue house:
That only leaves us with the options “Danish – tea” in the white house and “German – coffee” in the green one:
But be careful, because then we have nowhere to put “Swedish – dog”. Therefore, the hypothesis “beer – Bluemaster” in the blue house is wrong, which implies that it should go in the white house. Let’s retrace the walk…
And now yes, we can fill in as follows:
And pay attention because… we have just made the winning movement! Habemus owner of the fish.
Finally, who has the fish?
If you said that you were a German living in a green house, where you drank coffee and smoked Prince, then congratulations! I hope you found it interesting and I encourage you to challenge his friends to try to solve the problem.
An enigmatic greeting.