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Whose Fish?

By Albert Einstein (maybe)

Update: We've put this puzzle in a handy portable/printable PDF version here so you can find out how smart your family really is this holiday season. Cheers.

This brainteaser, reportedly written by Einstein is difficult and Einstein said that 98% of the people in the world could not figure it out. Which percentage are you in?

There are five houses in a row in different colors. In each house lives a person with a different nationality. The five owners drink a different drink, smoke a different brand of cigar and keep a different pet, one of which is a Walleye Pike.

The question is-- who owns the fish?

Hints:
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 house owner drinks coffee.
6. The person who smokes Pall Malls keeps birds.
7. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhills.
8. The man living in the house right in the center drinks milk.
9. The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
10. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the one who smokes Dunhills.
12. The owner who smokes Bluemasters drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Princes.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The man who smokes Blends has a neighbor who drinks water.

There are no tricks, pure logic will get you the correct answer. And yes, there is enough information to arrive at the one and only correct answer.

If you get the correct answer, congratulations, you are one of the exclusive group of 121,348,731 people in the world who can.

Send your correct answer and/or complaints to and we'll randomly pick three people who get it right and send them a limited-edition disc set of the Pixies at Lollapolooza in Chicago, A copy of Selections from Europe 2005, the best of the Dead Can Dance's European Tour. A Field-Tested Books poster by Jay Ryan of The Bird Machine and whatever else we can find around the studio. Good luck.

Note: We were tempted to include the phrase "show your work" with the rules for entry but then we figured that any dork who would Google a puzzle like this in order to win would have to live with self-loathing and guilt for the rest of their life and that would far outweigh the value of the prize package. Yes, we are in fact talking to you Nick M.

Note II: Of course, you never know, we might have been smart enough to shuffle the variables a bit so that the answer you find from Googling previous posts of the puzzle might be wrong in a way that allows us to know of your laziness and treachery. Not that we'd ever make such knowledge public or anything.

Note III: We'll announce the winners on Monday and email everyone who entered. There have been a lot of entries, a lot more than we expected. Some are right. Some are wrong. Some are just funny. We'll share some of those too. We'll post the answers and winners first to our RSS feed, which gives you the freshest Fresh Signals all day long and includes updates on contests and other stuff on the site too. So you might wanna subscribe.

Note IV: The contest is over but we won't spoil your fun, unless of course you want it spoiled. Click here for the answer if you want to take the easy way out.

Note V: For people who like this sort of thing we have a second fish puzzle available here and a slightly different sort of brain-teaser called Da Vinci's Other Code here. Get busy.

Note VI: Michele has a dastardly new puzzle that asks the philosophical question, Which Porn Star Ate the Most Hot Dogs? For a notice when we post the next puzzler and other stuff, add your email address under "Infrequent Mail" to the right.

Note VII: A few resources for solvers. Beware, these contain the answers so don't look until you're done or more likely, have given up.

Coudal Cover Page

A Thing We Made:
Jewelboxing

We hated the options available for custom packaging DVDs and CDs so we created a brand that gives creative professionals and hobbyists the tools to make great stuff. Here's a bit from the latest Jewelboxing weblog entry:

"Being as Bryan is our resident Jewelboxing printing expert, and just because he's a generally pleasant person, it's an interview well worth your time." Read the entire post.

Some Other Things We Made:

Field Notes Brand "I'm not writing it down to remember it later. I'm writing it down to remember it now." A CP/DDC joint.

Pinsetter: Spell with buttons.

Limited-edition, professionally mixed and mastered, custom-designed live performances on CD. That's The Show. With partners like The Pixies and Dead Can Dance. More news soon.

Lowercase Tee: For politically and otherwise active kids.

infrequent mail

For a quick note when features like this go live and other sporadic updates, which always include a way to win free stuff, enter your email here. We won't ever abuse the privilege. Period.