Here's some riddle I found (a variant of the zebra puzzle). Try to solve it as fast as possible (pen and paper only) and post your time (It took me approx. 15mn). Checking your solution is as easy as testing against each of the 15 statements. If none evaluates to false, your solution is correct.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A. There are 5 houses, each with a different color.
B. In each house lives a man with a unique nationality.
C. Each inhabitant prefers a certain kind of coffee, smokes a certain kind of cigarettes and uses a certain operating system.
D. None of the persons share the preference for coffee, smoke the same cigarettes or use the same OS.
Question: Given that one of the men uses Linux, who is it?
1. The Briton inhabits the red house.
2. The Swede uses OpenBSD.
3. The Dane drinks mocha.
4. The green house stands directly left of the white house.
5. The owner of the green house drinks Irish coffee.
6. The man who smokes Pall Mall uses MacOS.
7. The man who lives in the middle house drinks espresso.
8. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
9. The Norwegian lives in the leftmost house.
10. The Marlboro smoker lives directly adjacent to the man who uses Windows.
11. The man who uses Solaris lives directly adjacant to the man who smokes Dunhill.
12. The Winfield smoker drinks cappuccino.
13. The Norwegian lives in the house directly adjacent to the blue one.
14. The German smokes Rothmann's.
15. The Marlboro smoker's neighbor drinks latte macchiato.
Edit: I tried to come up with a solution that only answers the question without solving the entire thing and failed. Also in a second attempt with another of these puzzles I took considerably longer (about 25 to 30mn)... guess I was lucky with this one.
All syllogisms have three parts, therefore this is not a syllogism.
Here's some riddle I found (a variant of the zebra puzzle). Try to solve it as fast as possible (pen and paper only) and post your time (It took me approx. 15mn). Checking you solution is as easy as testing against each of the 15 statements. If none evaluates to false, your solution is correct.
Just commenting on the time part, it would be kinda funny if someone randomly guessed the answer and coincidentally got it right on the first try. :P
Here's some riddle I found (a variant of the zebra puzzle). Try to solve it as fast as possible (pen and paper only) and post your time (It took me approx. 15mn). Checking you solution is as easy as testing against each of the 15 statements. If none evaluates to false, your solution is correct.
Just commenting on the time part, it would be kinda funny if someone randomly guessed the answer and coincidentally got it right on the first try. :P
Actually Kuwaga answered to this thread with some good points about involvement of luck when it comes to solving the puzzle by an intuitive trial and error strategy, stressing that making the right assumptions by chance could be a significant timesaver (Unfortunately it was deleted for unknown reasons).
P.S.: The German Wikipedia has a code example in Prolog for solving this kind of riddle: Prolog example
All syllogisms have three parts, therefore this is not a syllogism.
Actually Kuwaga answered to this thread with some good points about involvement of luck when it comes to solving the puzzle by an intuitive trial and error strategy, stressing that making the right assumptions by chance could be a significant timesaver (Unfortunately it was deleted for unknown reasons).
On second thought, I decided to remove my post because it felt very rant-ish. I didn't want to turn this into that kind of thread. Unfortunately, I didn't back up my post before deleting it. I didn't think anybody would miss it.
The Dutch wikipedia article about the zebra puzzle shows a diagram commonly used to solve these sorts of puzzles iteratively and by hand (so no brute forcing necessary). I'm not sure why they're not shown on the English version, they're very common in newspapers here.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4090
Location: The Netherlands
Got it after ~45 minutes (some interim time spent TASing and watching darts matches). Same conclusion as Nach posted.
The German who lives in a green house, drinks Irish Coffee and smokes Rothmann's is the one who uses Linux.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
