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(As promised in the Keser Chaya thread.)
1. In a street there are five houses, painted five different colors.
[Note: They are all on the same side of the street.]
2. In each house lives a person of a different nationality.
3. These five homeowners each drink a different beverage, smoke a different brand of cigar, and keep different pets.
The question: Who owns the fish?
Clues:
1. The Brit lives in a red house.
2. The Swede keeps dogs.
3. The Dane drinks tea.
4. The green house is just to the left of the white house.
5. The owner of the green house 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 center 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 horses lives next to the one who smokes Dunhill.
12. The man 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 Blends has a neighbor who drinks water.
(This is not the original version of the puzzle, but it is a common
variant, and I received it personally from a great person.)
You may want to note what time you start and finish, but don’t do it if you’ll feel pressured and it will interfere with your thinking. Hatzlacha!
Is it a given that the 5th (you only mention 4 in the clues) pet is a fish? Or is the potential answer “I can’t know because you never told me that one of them owns a fish”?
It can’t be determined from the clues given because there is no indication that a fish is one of the pets, for all we know the fifth pet may be a hamster.
of course its a given. this is a real logical riddle, no shtick. the 5th is a fish and when you put all the clues together and work everything out you will have all the pets placed in houses and only one house wont have a pet
Even if you accept that the fifth pet is a fish, you still can’t fully work it out because you don’t know if the houses are counted from the left or the right.
You just try it out both ways. If you get an answer you like, keep it.
Maybe the last pet is a zebra
Really, why is it called the zebra puzzle unless that is the last pet and there is no goldfish!!!!
BTW I love these types of puzzles, I’m very good at them. I guess I’ll be doing this one in class on Sunday, I’ll tell you how long it takes me!
Ok, I solved it this morning. Took me about half an hour.
Should I post the answer, or do other want to try and figure it out themselves?
Mods, is there a way to hide a post until the reader clicks a button?
Here are the steps I followed to solve it (it only took me 10 minutes to recreate). I put the clue number before the step where appropriate:
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house. – second house is blue
13. The German smokes Prince. – not the first house
8. The man living in the center house drinks milk.
12. The man who smokes Blue Master drinks beer. – not middle house
The second house can’t drink coffee, smoke Dunhills, or be the Brit, because it’s blue
4. The green house is just to the left of the white house. – House 3 can’t be white, house 5 can’t be green, and house 1 can’t be green or white
5. The owner of the green house drinks coffee. – not the middle house. Therefore, House #4 must be green, and drinks coffee. That means #5 is white.
1. The Brit lives in a red house. – the only colors left are yellow and red. We know the Norwegian is in house 1, so he must be yellow. That means House 3 is red, and is the Brit
7. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill. – house 1, the Norwegian
11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the one who smokes Dunhill. – house 2
So at this point we know the following:
House 1 – Norwegian, yellow, Dunhill
House 2 – Blue, horses
House 3 – Brit, red, milk
House 4 – Green, coffee
House 5 – White
3. The Dane drinks tea. – can’t be house 4
12. The man who smokes Blue Master drinks beer. – can’t be house 1, because he smoked Dunhill. Only drink left for house 1 is Water
15. The man who smokes Blends has a neighbor who drinks water. – house 2
13. The German smokes Prince. – not house 3
For house 3, the only brand left is Pall Mall
6. The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds. – Brit, in house 3
2. The Swede keeps dogs. – not house 2
13. The German smokes Prince. – not house 2
House 2 must be the Dane, and therefore drinks tea
Therefore, house 5 drinks beer
12. The man who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.
Therefore, house 4 smokes Prince
13. The German smokes Prince.
Therefore, house 5 is the Swede
10. The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats. House 3 is birds, so house 1 must be cats
2. The Swede keeps dogs.
The only item left is the German keeping fish.
No, but you can post it in a separate thread and write “spoiler alert – answer to zebra puzzle” in the title.
this was fun, took me about 15-20min, when do you want the answer posted?
oot for life, I tried to post the answer, with the steps I used to solve it, but the mods aren’t approving it yet. I still see it highlighted in yellow.
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