{"id":393,"date":"2005-11-03T15:30:49","date_gmt":"2005-11-03T07:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nargalzius.com\/blog2\/http:\/www.nargalzius.com\/blog2\/archives\/2005\/11\/2005_11_03_1530.php"},"modified":"2005-11-03T15:30:49","modified_gmt":"2005-11-03T07:30:49","slug":"top-2-percent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/11\/03\/top-2-percent","title":{"rendered":"Top 2 percent"},"content":{"rendered":"

Got this from Jem<\/a>, and answered it too. But I’m posting my solution here because when I googled to check if I got it right, I saw much simpler\/faster ways to answer it hahaha which made me kinda sad that I took a “logical-long-cut.”<\/em> But nonetheless, it was nice to know that I solved it either way.<\/p>\n

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Are you in the TOP 2% of intelligent people in the world? Solve the riddle and find out.\nThere are no tricks, just pure logic. So goodluck and don’t give up.<\/p>\n

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  1. In a street there are five houses, painted five different colors.<\/li>\n
  2. In each house lives a person of different nationality.<\/li>\n
  3. These five homeowners each drink a different kind of beverage, smoke different brand of cigar and keep a different pet.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    QUESTION: WHO OWNS THE FISH?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Hints:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. The Brit lives in a red house.<\/li>\n
    2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets.<\/li>\n
    3. The Dane drinks tea.<\/li>\n
    4. The Green house is on the left of the White house.<\/li>\n
    5. The owner of the Green house drinks coffee.<\/li>\n
    6. The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.<\/li>\n
    7. The owner of the Yellow house smokes Dunhill.<\/li>\n
    8. The man living in the center house drinks milk.<\/li>\n
    9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.<\/li>\n
    10. The man who smokes Blends lives next to the man who keeps cats.<\/li>\n
    11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.<\/li>\n
    12. The man who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.<\/li>\n
    13. The German smokes Prince.<\/li>\n
    14. The Norwegian lives next to the Blue house.<\/li>\n
    15. The man who smokes Blends has a neighbor who drinks water.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Albert Einstein wrote this riddle during the 19th century. He said that 98% of the population would not be able to solve it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

      My method was to represent each house, and list down all possibilities<\/strong> in each house… and do a process of elimination. But I would have to say that the solution I found in Google<\/a> after the excercise, was a faster and more elegant attack on the problem.<\/p>\n

      Though my method was far from efficient, I guess I could find solace in the fact that I thought out of the box<\/em> hahaha.<\/p>\n

      \n

      In my method, after filling up the “possibilities” from the conditions on all 5 houses, and got something that looked like this<\/a>. The little letter prefixes on some “possibilities” are only indicators – so when I eliminate something that is paired with another condition, I won’t forget to delete it’s “partner.”<\/p>\n

      Getting right to it, you’ll notice that Conditions 9 and 13 forces the Norwegian and German to be distinct entries, just like the others 1 <\/sup><\/a>Now, since we have 5 distinct values in 1 common field (nationality) we can use that as identifiers as we go along.<\/span><\/span>