Einstein's Challenge

[CrystyB]

those are good times for the age you're at. But to really make it noteworthy, why don't you post in here your whole line of reasoning?

[Dragon Phoenix]

[Mackay]

yay! *throws virgin rats*

[HyToFry]

w00t! Celebrate good times! Come on!

[Yesterday's Child]

Okay, I'll admit that this took me ages and give myself a little private pat on the back for sticking with it.

Does anyone have a good methodology for approaching a problem like this? I have a feeling that one of the reasons it took me so long was that I tackled it in a really free-form way - lots of scibbled notes and whatnot. I remember doing puzzles like this in grade school and our teacher showed us a kind of chart to build and I remember that it worked really well. Is it a whole bunch of little charts for pairs of variables, or is it one big chart with everything on it.

I'd love a little advice.

Also, anyone know where I can find tonnes of these puzzles to play around with?

[/dev/joe*]

The standard logic puzzle chart is built as follows:

[Eshers*]

Did it at half-past midnight for a bit of fun, and it took me around 20 minutes. It would have helped if I hadn't misread one of the hints. *doh!*

And Excel is the way forward I ended up with two charts. One with the positioning across the top:
1 2 3 4 5
(colour)
(nationality)
(drink) etc.

and the other organised sideways, but slightly differently. I just filled in the grid so that all spaces were used. Then moved them around accordingly. This helped, as I could show that the German smoked Prince, without having to know where (which house) he was. From that elimination process, it became a lot easier (I only started doing that after 15 mins, then it was easy sailing)

[papercut*]

I'm glad a couple people caught on to the point of this puzzle. I saw the writer's (or minotaur's, whatever) solution and was afraid that everyone here would be mislead.

First things first:

A. In most circumstances of a puzzle like this, (that's not written by Einstein) the best way to solve it is a chart. Hands down. It just makes everything easier.

B. Again, were it not writ by Einstein, yes, the German has the fish.

C. It was written by Einstein. Societies have this atrocious habit of warping everything that anyone intelligent says or does, and this is a minor case of that. I don't know Einstein's original words in the challenge, but the tobacco brands and surely some of the other random names have been changed over time. Einstein did in fact write it, he did say less than 2% of people could solve it, and he was probably right.

D. We don't know who has the fish. That's the whole point.

Einstein spent the brunt of his life trying to show that (beware of pun) science was all relative. His absolute greatest work was a description of gravity, defying all known science, that turned out to be completely true... in a fictional universe. Other scientists always based their science off of what humans perceive, what we know, what effects us. So Newton's description of gravity is true, because we know it is; we feel it, it makes sense. It's obvious. We think it's obvious that someone has the fish: there's five people, four pets accounted for, and we're asked who has the fifth animal. We think someone must have it. So we go to work and tediously figure it out (eventually), using the logic and reason we know. Like Newton. Einstein looked outside of human perception though. What would happen, gravity-wise, if matter traveled at the speed of light? (Which it never will.) What would happen in a situation of rediculous gravity and mass that no human will ever come across? If there are other universes, how do they effect gravity in ours?

Apart from the babbling, the point is, Einstein looked outside of the (Earthen) box (sphere?). He threw away basic reason and logic, and this puzzle goes after the same idea.

Just because you're asked for a fish doesn't mean there is one.