Richy's Random Ramblings

We were recently given the following puzzle at work (for some unknown reason) and were told the record for solving it as far as our boss knew was 4 hours – some people have spent days and months over it and some people aren’t able to solve it at all! I managed around 2.5 hours 😀

Allegedly set by Albert Einstein who said the 98% of the world could not solve it, you’ve just to got simply work out who owns the pet fish.

The following facts are known:

• There are 5 houses in 5 different colours (Red, White, Green, Blue and Yellow)
• In each house lives a man with a different nationality (British, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and German)
• Each man (who owns the house) drinks a certain type of beverage (Tea, Coffee, Water, Milk and Beer), smokes a certain brand of cigar (Pall Mall, Dunhill, Blends, Bluemasters and Prince) and keeps a certain pet (Dogs, Cats, Fish, Horses and Birds)
• No owners have the same pet, smoke the same brand of cigar or drink the same beverage
• All the houses are on the same side of the street and the first house is on the left hand side. References to the “neighbour” refers only to a directly adjacent neighbour.

You also know the following “hints” or clues:

1. The British man lives in the red house
2. The Swedish man keeps dogs as pets
3. The Danish man drinks tea
4. The green house is on the left of the white house
5. The green house’s 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 centre house drinks milk
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats
11. The man who keeps the horse lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill
12. The owner who smokes Bluemasters drinks beer
13. The German smokes Prince
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house
15. The man who smokes Blends has a neighbour who drinks water

Via Ben Hammersley is this magnificent piece of pavement art – Batman and Robin to the rescue (it goes quite well with this spiderman one).

They’re drawn by Julian Beever who is quite famous for his anamorphic 3D pavement work – have a look at his “full catalogue” for the ones you may remember.