Only 2% People In The World Can Solve This Riddle By Einstein. Can You Solve This?

When it came time to interview candidates for programming, development, and strategy positions, there was one question I always loved to ask. The 'Einstein’s Riddle'. This brainteaser is a fantastic way to find out which candidates stand out and possess structured thinking and mental horsepower.

“Einstein’s Riddle” is a logic puzzle whose creation is often credited to a young Albert Einstein (though there is no hard evidence to support this claim). It demands patience and logical processing to be properly solved. I would offer interviewees the question in writing and offer them a whiteboard and marker to show me their work.

Here’s the riddle in three pieces:

Background:

  • There are five houses in five different colors
  • A person with a different nationality lives in each house
  • The five owners each 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

Clues:

  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 left of the white house
  5. The green homeowner 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 Blend 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 Blue Master drinks beer
  13. The German smokes Prince
  14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house
  15. The man who smokes Blend has a neighbor who drinks water

The Question:

Who has a fish for a pet?

Most applicants completely gave up in exasperation and didn’t even attempt to answer the riddle because they either thought it was impossible to answer, or they couldn’t seem to figure out. The way to solve this is to fill in the details one at a time and analyze the clues given.

Some candidates that were really good with frameworks and logical processing wrote out a grid and continued to loop through the clues until they filled it in. The reason for the numerous loops is that many of the clues are not useful until you’ve filled in what you already know.

I had one 23-year-old candidate for a project manager position go to my white board and answer it in about ten minutes flat. I was stunned. Not only did I hire him on the spot, but within 18 months he was the managing director of my entire ASEAN operation. He grew a beard to look older because he feared that our ASEAN clients would never want to work with such a young person. By 25 years old he was at Stanford Business School getting his MBA. He was truly one of the top 2% of anyone I’ve ever met or worked with.

Can you solve this? Give it a try and see if you can solve this riddle and claim to have one of the top brains in the world

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By |2018-03-11T00:52:45+00:00March 11th, 2018|Comments Off on Only 2% People In The World Can Solve This Riddle By Einstein. Can You Solve This?

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