Tag Archives: Logical thinking

Einstein’s Riddle: I Solved It, Can You?

21 Monday Sep 2015

Posted by in Fun

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Here’s a fun one for you guys, straight from IFLS. I love riddles (even if I’m not always good at them). I solved this one. Can you?

The following riddle is claimed to have been written by Einstein as a boy. It’s also sometimes attributed to Lewis Carrol, although there’s no evidence that either of them actually wrote it. Either way, it’s fiendishly clever and is popularly called “Einstein’s riddle”. It’s rumored that only 2% of the world can solve it.

There are five houses in five different colors in a row. In each house lives a person with a different nationality. The five owners drink a certain type of beverage, smoke a certain brand of cigar and keep a certain pet. No owners have the same pet, smoke the same brand of cigar, or drink the same beverage. Other facts:

1. The Brit lives in the red house.
2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Dane drinks tea.
4. The green house is on the immediate left of the white house.
5. The green house’s owner drinks coffee.
6. The owner who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
7. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
8. The owner living in the center house drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The owner who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
11. The owner who keeps the horse lives next to the one 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 owner who smokes Blends lives next to the one who drinks water.

The question is: who owns the fish?

The fish is in the green house with the German who drinks coffee and smokes Prince.
If you can’t figure it out, here’s a video to help:

Thinking In Wobbly Lines

23 Monday Feb 2015

Posted by in Thoughts

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What do you blog about when you’re too tired to think straight? I have been tired all week. Thankfully, I pre-wrote last week’s posts. But now this week is here. …Oi.

I wonder where that saying came from, to “think straight.” I mean, yes, logical progression does seem, metaphorically speaking, to be more straight than crooked. Is that was it means though? Logical thinking? It seems to refer to something broader than that, to me. What about when you “think outside the box?” Are you still thinking “straight” when you think outside the box? Thinking outside the box is often applauded, after all, just like thinking straight.

Maybe there are advantages to not thinking straight. What would it look like if we thought in zig-zags? Would it be creative? Nonsensical? Just plain loony? What about in circles? That seems negative, as one would never get anywhere. Like circular logic, which is argued to be self-defeating or even nonsensical in and of itself.

The more important question may be, is this product of my sleep-hungry brain making any sense at all? Are my words making any sense, straight, curved, or otherwise? Am I writing, as well as thinking, in wobbly lines? Regardless, this is all I have to offer today. And it’s only Monday. We’ll see what Thursday brings…