Talk:Zebra Puzzle

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[edit] Copyright problems

Wikipedia:Copyright problems

    • Einstein's Puzzle
      • Has now been rephrased. May have been public domain, anyway. Kevin Saff 14:56, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)
        • List of SAT Words starting with C
        • And many more lists of SAT words.
    • Claim of public domain. (Still a question of whether these belong here.) Kevin Saff 14:56, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)
    • This has now been rephrased. Kevin Saff 14:56, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)
      • I can most certainly say that that Einstein's Puzzle did not come from that page, it is much older ( in fact, i remember solving it in 12 minutes at the age of 14 ), i cannot speak for the other pages but that page most certainly did not originally come from that url, he may have copied it from there but that is not it's original origin. --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 21:03, 2004 Apr 27 (UTC)
        • You're probably right. I guess I don't know the copyright status of things like this, and became overzealous when I saw that all of this user's edits were copy/pastes from other websites. Kevin Saff 14:56, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Since it's been more than a month and nobody else cares, I've reinstated the text, with some tweaking ... DavidWBrooks 18:31, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] The Solution

How about putting the solution on another page? For example, Einstein's puzzle/Solution. Jimp 27Nov05

The ((solution)) warning seems to be the preferred way to handle this. See [1]. Canon 21:00, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Fair point. Okay, let's leave it as it is. Jimp 30Nov05

What about making the Solution expendable like in the German Wikipedia (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebrar%C3%A4tsel). That way it would still be on the same page but it would not be visible for people who want to read the rest of the Article and solve the Puzzle at a later time. Furthermore I think the Spoiler policy does not apply here since it states that "A spoiler is a piece of information in an article about a narrative work (such as a book, feature film, television show or video game) that reveals plot events or twists." which is not the case here. Stipa (talk) 05:26, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ordered from left to right

"One other thing: In Statement 6, right means your right." says the article. The fact is that it doesn't matter whose right it is. What matters is that the houses are in a row and ordered from left to right. I'll adjust the wording accordingly. Jimp 29Nov05

What does matter is that the "first" house is on the "left".Badmuthahubbard 05:38, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
The first house on the left is a house on one end of the row. It doesn't matter which end as long as you are consistent in deciding which end is left. Canon 14:03, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
So why mention that it's on the left? I took that out, but I'm not dogmatic about it - can you explain to those of us who are a bit slow why it needs to be mentioned? - DavidWBrooks 14:48, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
If you look at the clues, the only ones that mention direction are 6 (which mentions "right") and 10 (which mentions "first"). Looking at the solution logic, you find that clue 6 is used in step 1 only to deduce that the green and ivory houses are next to one another. The sense of direction is an inessential detail. Nonetheless, it serves to establish that the first house is on the left end. Therefore I agree it does not need to be stated as an assumption since it can be deduced from the clues. Canon 15:22, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Actually, I don't think that the fact that the first house is on the left can be deduced from the clues.
If you make the assumption that the first house is the rightmost one, you'll find that you get a solution and that the Norwegian still drinks water, and the Japanese still owns the zebra, but who lives where will change slightly.
Under this assumption, the solution looks like a left-right reversal of the solution given in the article, except that the [green, Spaniard, orange juice, Lucky Strike, dog] house is at the (leftmost) end of the street, swapping positions with the [ivory, Japanese, coffee, Parliament, zebra] house. --Rick 15:11, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
Interesting. So it is not the case that the puzzle requires that "first" mean "leftmost." Is it worth stating that the specific solution given in the article is one of two possibilities depending upon whether "first" means "leftmost" or "rightmost"? Canon 17:10, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
I have added this "right-to-left" solution. --Aleph4 16:51, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spelling

The version that was here was the version originally published in Life International, which reportedly circulated in mimeographed form widely in the early 1960s. I do not know who originated this puzzle but the Life International version predates all published versions of which I am aware. As is common with popular puzzles, people feel free to adapt the puzzle to their local culture. Thus there are versions with British and American cigarette brands, different pets and nationalities, and so on. I believe the original puzzle was American and thus the original spelling was "color." Do you have evidence to the contrary? Canon 21:00, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

No, no evidence to the contrary, however this was not the basis for my reversion. Yes, people quite naturally will adapt such puzzles to their taste. The version which first appeared in this encyclopædia used the spelling colour. It also used British brands of cigarettes. The solution was then added with the American spelling, color.
Now, the Wikipedia manual of style recommends that we "consider following the spelling style preferred by the first major contributor (that is, not a stub) to the article" (where the article is not specific to any particular country). This is a reasonable approach.
Why, I wonder, wasn't this advice followed when the solution was added. Perhaps it was overlooked. The article then continued to have two different spellings for a while. Eventually the two occurrences of the word were brought in line, however, the American spelling was kept.
I'm sure that this was all done quite innocently however, in the spirit of Wikipedia's approach to variant spelling I reverted color back to colour.
On the other hand, you do bring up an interesting point about how the spelling appeared in the first published version. The manual of style hasn't mentioned this. It probably should but the place to discuss it would be at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style.
Of course, the puzzle probably existed long before it was published and so who's to say how the original author would prefer us to spell colour? If, though, the author is Einstein, then it would be a translation from German and thus either spelling would be equally valid.
Jimp 30Nov05
As a minor point, Einstein almost certainly was not the author of this puzzle. The claim that he was seems to have originated in the 1980s, long after the puzzle was in wide circulation. I think this was a form of advertising for the puzzle since the earliest attributions to Einstein are all in the form "Einstein said that only 2% of the people in the world can solve this puzzle." I very much doubt that this is the kind of thing Einstein would have said, even if the dates were right.
Popular puzzles like this can succumb to version wars, in which people with more enthusiasm than sophistication continuously edit the puzzle to conform to the *one true version* which usually is the version they first heard. I've been editing the rec.puzzles archive for 25 years and I've seen that many times. Take a look at the Gry entry for an example of how bad it can get. I've extensively researched the history of this puzzle. I have reason to believe that the Life International version was the original wording (the puzzle does not date back before the 1960s or late 1950s). Since this wording has historical precedence, I believe that by sticking strictly to it we can avoid the version wars. Canon 13:33, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
You present a good argument, Canon. I'll revert my edits. However, the point I made above that it doesn't matter whose right it is still stands. This may not matter but let's leave sentence as it was though with the additional note that the houses are in a row and ordered from left to right.
Jimp 1Dec05
Thanks very much for your graciousness. I agree that the clarifying sentence separate from the original problem statement is just right. This is an example of Wikipedia at its best. Canon 03:46, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Puzzle Version ?

I have found this version of puzzle:

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 adjacent on the left of the white house

5. The green house owner drinks coffee

6. The person who smokes Pall Mall raises birds

7. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill

8. The man living in the house right in the center drinks milk

9. The Norwegian lives in the first house

10. The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats

11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the one who smokes Dunhill

12. The owner who smokes Bluemaster drinks juice

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


This version is solvable, but for version in article i am not sure. In article version exist hint "There are five houses.". Maybe some hints is missed in article version. Any suggestion ?

Since the original publication, there have been many versions of this puzzle with various changes made, such as the types of pets, the nationalities, the brands of cigarettes or whether cigarettes are mentioned at all, and so on. This is common in popular puzzles (see the Gry entry for an even more evolved puzzle). However, the original version certainly was solvable, and was in fact solved within a month of the original publication in 1962 by several hundred people from around the world whose names were published in a follow-up article. Canon 12:57, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

After small analyses i have found hint "The man who smokes Blend has a neighbor who drinks water" in this puzzle. Puzzle from article not include any form of this hint.

Do you somebody have solving process for article version ? Chupcko 16:33, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
If you send me your email address I will send you the shortest solution that was sent in to Life International in 1962. Canon 23:22, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
I have (tanks Canon) progress of solving "article puzzle" with two backtracking. Its good idea to added this progress in article ? Maybe in section "Solving method" ? Chupcko 00:50, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Even the short solution I sent Chupcko is too long to put in an article, it seems to me. That is why the external links point to programs that can solve any version of the problem. By examining the source code of these programs, you can see various approaches to solving this kind of problem. What this leaves out is anyone who cannot read source code, so perhaps a general explanation of how to solve them is needed. Canon 03:32, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comments at end of original puzzle

The comment at the end of the original puzzle (ending with the statement about which direction "right" refers to) are part of the original puzzle, as can be seen here first known publication. Since the article is claiming that it is presenting the original puzzle, we shouldn't alter this text. The next section of the article contains commentary on the puzzle, and this is where people have been adding clarifying comments, criticisms, and so forth. Canon 12:13, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

My error - I am the one who removed it. Is there some way we can mark it up to make it clear that this wording was part of the original puzzle? Particularly with the following paragraph, which is clearly not from the original puzzle, it reads as if it's an addition by a wiki editor (as I mistakenly thought it was). - DavidWBrooks 14:29, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
OK, I tried something - indenting the entire original puzzle and putting a solid line at the bottom. Not the handsomest, perhaps; better alternatives are welcome. - DavidWBrooks 14:35, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
I like that a lot. This inspired me to collect all the commentary in one place and add pointers to solution techniques. I also made the text of the original version section conform exactly to the original text except for the obsolete spelling of "cigaret". Canon 23:52, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
We have on the table a request for an explanation of how to solve the puzzle. Plus we have people who have objected to giving the solution in the article. So perhaps everyone would be a bit happier if we inserted a section between the original puzzle and the solution (putting a bit of distance between them) that contained commentary on the puzzle and a short discussion of how to solve this kind of puzzle. Canon 12:13, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Misattributions

Now that someone has brought up the Lewis Carroll misattribution, should we add the Lewis Carrol category or delete the Albert Einstein category? I've checked with several Lewis Carroll experts, and none of them think this is the type of puzzle that Lewis Carroll would have invented (nearly all of his puzzles involved logic with quantifiers - logic with "for all" and "there exists"). None of them can find this puzzle or anything like it in his work.

Speaking of misattribution, I just deleted a link to a Web site that repeats nearly every wrong thing ever said about this puzzle. Does anyone think I should have left it there? Canon 21:46, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

You done good. - DavidWBrooks 23:34, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. Do you think we should delete the Einstein category? For some reason I find it mildly insulting. Canon 23:52, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
I think categories are kind of stupid; I don't think people really use them - they just suck away editing energy, IMHO. So delete it, if you wish. - DavidWBrooks 00:00, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
OK, how about this then: We create a new article "Zebra Puzzle", copy the contents of this article to it, and have this article redirect to it? Is that going too far? Canon 00:16, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
I have sent the creators of the "Einstein's Riddle" page er.myhomy.com an email complimenting them on their site but asking them to remove the misattribution to Einstein that is at the top of the page. So far there has not been a response. I will try again. In the meantime, it seems to me that it might be advisable to move the content of this page (as I mention above) to some less confusing place, e.g., "Zebra Puzzle." This page would be changed to a redirect. Any objections? Canon 14:03, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Yea, Zebra Puzzle is a better name. Those who know it as Einstein's puzzle/riddle will still find it. As for categories, though, I find them useful. I have used them in the past. They are good when you're taking a category wide approach to editing, for example, gathering up a whole bunch of related stubs which on their own have no potential for growth but together would make a decent article. Jimp 01:47, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Solutions

I did the 'fish' one in about an hour, but this one has me stuck at proving the red house is in the middle and who the occupant of the blue house is. Was going to try some of the source code to see if it is solvable, but the C# link no longer works, and the other one is in LISP which is just downright unreadable. The english PDF that's up there doesn't seem to have a solution, just a worksheet for solving the problem, and even if it did it's the fish puzzle and not the zebra one. Can someone post an English solution, step-by-step, that doesn't make any leaps in logic? Can someone else fix the links, and find ones applicable to the Zebra puzzle and not the fish puzzle? It's safe to say they're 2 different puzzles, since the number of clues differs (not counting 'there are five houses' as a clue, that should be a given, the extra clue increasing the easiness factor by 16%).

If you send me your email address I will send you the shortest solution that was sent in to Life International in 1962. Canon 04:38, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Move/Redirect

I noticed that the talk page for Zebra Puzzle wasn't moved from this location (talk:Einstein's Puzzle) when the article was moved/renamed on March 25. There isn't a redirect either, though that may be an option. Is there a reason for this, or should the talk page be moved as well? -- Jared 16:19, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fish versus Zebra

Why is it redundant to note that there are versions of the puzzle that ask "Who owns the fish?" instead of "Who owns the zebra?" Canon 04:22, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

"Redundant" was the wrong word - "unnecessary" is better, since there's no fish mentioned anywhere else. There's probably a version somewhere that asks about an armadillo instead of a zebra, but mentioning that wouldn't be terribly helpful either. - DavidWBrooks 10:22, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
This is a good logical point, but if you google "who owns the fish" you'll find many times more hits than for "who owns the zebra" so since we're doing an encyclopedia article we need to document that fact. Canon 15:42, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
We need to explain that in the article, not just drop in a sentence that left me scratching my head and saying "fish - huh?" - DavidWBrooks 18:17, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
That would be great. Do you want me to take a crack at it? Canon 19:31, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
Sure, because I've never seen a fish. I mean, I've seen a fish but ... well, anyway, you get my drift. - DavidWBrooks 19:33, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] er.myhomy.com

I previously removed a link to this page because it contains many incorrect statements about this puzzle, and in the interests of clearing up the misconceptions about this puzzle I will continue to do so until the misstatements on the page are corrected. Canon 23:37, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Life International?

What's Life International magazine - is it just Life (magazine)'s international edition, or something different? - DavidWBrooks 23:04, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

From the magazine: "LIFE International is published by Time-Life International (Nederland) nv, at 590 Keizersgracht, Amsterdam-C., Netherlands." There was an editorial and advertising staff separate from the US staff. Canon 01:10, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Do you have a copy in front of you? Does the masthead say "Life International", or just "Life", with "international edition" or something down below - like this photo [[2]]. If that's what we're dealing with here, I think we could link to Life (magazine), which was the point of my long-winded query. - DavidWBrooks 02:15, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I have a copy. The masthead says "Life International", actually, "LIFE International". Canon 12:55, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
So the red link stays! -DavidWBrooks 15:41, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Alternatively, someone who knows something about magazines, who, say, is in the publishing business, maybe a reporter or some such, might create an article. Know anyone like that? ;^) Canon 18:40, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Corrected poor wording

Two of the rules (11 and 12) used to read "X is in the house next to the house where Y." We have corrected these to read more like "X is in one of the houses next to the house where Y." The former wording led to a contradiction. The new wording allows for a solution.

--Two random passers by.

And the "corrections" have been reverted, and I (one of the two aforementioned random passersby) approve, as I have just realized the article is supposed to be giving the original form of the puzzle. My apologies.

I think the concern I've expressed here could be included in a comment in the article, though. But I guess that's "original research?" I dunno.

The one that i heard didn't have "smokes". It had Flowers; Roses, Marigolds, Geraniums, Lilies, and Gardenias

The statement "Rule 11 suffers from a similar problem as that just described regarding rule 12." is incorrect as there is only one house next to House 1. Though, it is confusing due to rule 12's error. *Fixes*