Einstein's Intelligence Quiz ?

[Rockazella]

I felt like showing up my mom one night, so I went searching for online IQ tests. While searching I came across this thing:

http://www.business.uiuc.edu/broker/iq.htm

I'm curious to know if this is legit or not. Has anyone heard of, or tried this before?

Anyway, if it is, or even if it isn't by Einstein, I urge you all to give it a shot. You'll feel like your 'The Man' (or woman) when/if you complete it. I know I'm the man!

Also...keep track of how long it takes you so you can be put in your place

 

[Monique]

After 30 min of puzzling, and coming close to the answer, I made a stupid mistake and have to start overagain :( Pfuw! It is not an eazy puzzel :)

 

[Zantra]

right off the bat without doing any figuring I can say it's solvable with a little bit of abstract thinking. I'll let you know

 

[FZ+]

About 15 minutes and a small piece of paper...

Highlight below if you really want it...

< rouf esuoh ni namreg eht >

EDIT: Stupid mistake. I got the right answer, but typed it up wrong. No seriously . Maybe that's a mark of a genius?

 

[Monique]

Originally posted by Zantra
right off the bat without doing any figuring I can say it's solvable with a little bit of abstract thinking. I'll let you know

How much CPU do you've got?

 

[Gale]

20 minutes, and a lot of paper. I couldn't pick which method was best, so redid it like 3 times... how do we know if our answer's right though?

edit- i realized fz posted his answer... mine only half matches though. is there an official answer somewhere?

 

[Rockazella]

edit- i realized fz posted his answer... mine only half matches though.

There's something troubling about part of FZ's answer.

is there an official answer somewhere?

Well of course...my answer is the official answer

If you really want to know if your answer is correct, solve it for every house. If you don't feel like solving for every house, Leme know and I'll just send it to you (Ive got much empathy for the lazy)

 

[Rockazella]

right off the bat without doing any figuring I can say it's solvable with a little bit of abstract thinking.

I felt the same way when I first read it. After spending 20 minutes trying to think of abstract ways to go about solving it, I gave that up for good old dependable trial and error. If you can come up with an abstract route to the answer, definitely consider yourself in that top 2%.
Good luck!

 

[Monique]

Originally posted by FZ+
About 15 minutes and a small piece of paper...

Highlight below if you really want it...

< rouf esuoh ni namreg eht >

EDIT: Stupid mistake. I got the right answer, but typed it up wrong. No seriously . Maybe that's a mark of a genius?

Yup, I got to the same answer. How did you do it so fast FZ+? I solved the whole thing for every house and it took me 30 min.

 

[recon]

I found the answer in around 30 minutes too. This was mostly due to mistakes I made (I kept thinking that Blue Master, Blend and Prince were Beers!). I think the test is a little(!) bit culture-biased as I have never heard of those cigars before, and since I am from far-away Borneo (the country Brunei to be exact), I obviously had a little difficulty. Then again, you could blame me for not having made up a proper list of the beverages, cigars, pets and Nationalities and scratch them of as I filled them into the table.

But apart from that, I don't think it was too challenging. If I, an ordinary 14-year-old, can do it, so can any adult. Einstein's assumption that only the top 2% of people can do it must be wrong! Here's a table of my results:

Yellow Blue Red Green White
Nationality Norwegian Dane British German Swede
Beverage Water Tea Milk Coffee Beer
Cigar Dunhill Blend Pall Mall Prince Blue Master
Pet Cat Horse Bird Fish Dog

 

[recon]

Sorry about my table. Anyway, it is probably for the best as it would make it harder for you to read, thus encouraging you to tackle the problem yourself first!

 

[Monique]

We have the same nationality for the fish, but my table is very different..

You say: blue norwegian water dunhill cat
I say: blue horse tea blend 2 dane
For the norwegian I DO have the same as you, just in the yellow house. I guess you didn't read the last clue correctly, the Norwegian lives NEXT to the blue house :) that is the mistake I made the first time around too :)

What do the others have for the blue house?

 

[bogdan]

This is the answer...
http://www.astrohoroscopes.com/puzzles/logic/einsteinquizanswer.html

 

[Njorl]

26 minutes

I replaced everything with numbers in an attempt to force more abstract reasoning, but it didn't work. I just filled in the table and looked for the next piece of "certain" information.

Njorl

 

[Zantra]

Originally posted by Monique
How much CPU do you've got?

huh? I'm not an einstein if that's what you mean...hehe

 

[Monique]

Originally posted by Zantra
huh? I'm not an einstein if that's what you mean...hehe

That's what I meant proposing to solve the problem by a little abstract thinking, my system would overload :)

 

[Gale]

well, my answers mathed that link. I solved for everything, it really wasn't that difficult. I'm pretty decent with logic puzzles so i just set up a sort of table thingie. Anyways, that link isn't the same as fz's or monique...

But yeah, i'd have to say that a lot more people can solve that problem than 2% or whatever.

 

[Zantra]

I think a major factor is in the time it takes to solve it. Yes if you map it out pretty much anyone can solve it given enough time by deductive reasoning. I think the 2% are able to make some abstract short cut connection to solve it much quicker- just an educated guess.

 

[Zeke]

a whole hour but give me some credit I am in mid school

 

[recon]

We have the same nationality for the fish, but my table is very different..

Monique, our answers are the same. You just misread my table, that's all! I checked out that website and both our answers are correct.

BTW, I did this when I was half-asleep (at Midnight Brunei Time) and had school the next day (today) so I did not bother with re-correcting it. Did anyone else do this half-asleep in less than 30 minutes?

I've only had 5 hours of sleep, so got to catch up on some sleep now. Good luck to anyone who has not yet tried the puzzle. [zz)] [zz)]

 

[RageSk8]

There are no abstract shorcuts for problems like these. Some people can keep track of more information at once than others and thus solve such problems more quickly. I highly doubt that only 2% of the population could solve this problem, but I think very few could solve it without the aid of pen and paper. Meh, I think people put too much value in intelligence quizes and IQ for that matter. Einstein himself did not have an amazingly high IQ (161 I believe).

 

[jammieg]

It's a popular logic puzzle format these days and yes I think Einstein was trying to make people use their brains more by saying only 98% like some kind of double dare, but a fun way to solve them I've found although it takes a bit longer at first than drawing up the diagrams is to sit back and relax with some music and slowly read each factual and try to visualize everything like it was a real living neighborhood, the key isn't to force the information to fit but let each bit sink in for a moment and try to reason out what one can of each factual, then move on to read the next item and so on, after about a dozen read throughs and trying to reason each factual out a bit more than each time things naturally start to fall into place kind of like that game minesweep, but I think it's a lot funner without pencil and paper at least although my time on this one was well over an hour.
I'm sure anyone can solve them without pencil and paper if they practiced it this way, there's nothing special about it, it's method and practice.

...It's like memorizing a long poem, it seems impossible to memorize so many words as a child until one does it, only in this case we aren't trying to memorize and visualize the things so much themselves but rather the logical functions of those things and what really makes the puzzle fall into place, and so
by repetition and practice it is no different than doing a 3 factual problem or memorizing a single line of poetry, actually I don't know, if the initial question where who committed the murder and there were many more facts to choose from it could still be sorted through this way and I wonder how close Einstein's puzzle is to the essense of real life puzzles.

 

[Doc]

I did it in less than half an hour but probably more than 5 minutes. It has been a while since I took this test. If I recall correctly, the key to doing it is to do it backwards. Everyone starts marking things down on a piece of paper with all of the houses marked as boxes, people matched up with animals and things like that. Then they concentrate on what they know to be true. Mark off what you know NOT TO BE TRUE. After that, with a little help from what you know to be true you will have it. I believe it is probably possible that a large percentage of people in the world could not solve it. I like to think that the people who frequent physics forums are above average intelligence. Remember there are a lot of people out there that simply exist a life consisting of: Work, drink beer and party, sleep, over and over again.

 

[Reddhawk]

I did it in about 30 minutes, but rather than use pen and paper, I put modern technology to use and typed the information into Notepad.

Anyway, it doesn't make any difference now but here's what I got:

1
yellow
Norwegian
water
Dunhill
cats

2
blue
Dane
tea
blend
horses

3
red
brit
milk
pall mall
bird

4
green
German
coffee
prince
fish

5
white
swede
beer
blue master
dogs

Well anyways the answer to the actual question is: the German

anyone else got a similar puzzle?
Reddhawk

 

[jammieg]

I think this is partly what Plato might have meant about "true forms", I mean if one can observe the world long enough with logic and notice the cause and effects and pay attention to what people do and not what they say, and of these things be honest and objective with them then wouldn't the world seem to come together like a puzzle in those respects or in whatever intellectual respects one observed the world as their are likely many? I'm sure Plato thought he was in a whole different world and wanted to share it with others not because it was different but because logic works and it help to see how things work and fit together or theorize and try to fit them together in this manner.

 

[1314920]

i have seen this riddle last year from a differnet forum:) really good quiz.. i wasn't able to solve it..but my cousin got it..and shockingly enough my dad too..

if you have good logic you can solve this riddle.. the 98% thing isn't really true .

 

[JamesU]

THis thread is three years old, and welcome to PF

 

[end3r7]

Lol, I finished the puzzle in less than 10 mins, but I didn't see the question ("Who owns the fish?"). For about 5 minutes, I kept re-reading the page for mistakes or soemthing.

 

[end3r7]

Einstein himself did not have an amazingly high IQ (161 I believe).

That's amazingly high to me. :P

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

the 98% thing isn't really true.

Actually, I expect the 98% thing is true. No one in this thread got the right answer. A second thread with the same puzzle appeared in Physics Forums about a year or so ago with the correct answer which I repeat below:


No one has a fish. The only time a fish is mentioned is in the question. That is the 'Einstein' angle. Einstein's special theory requires you to abandon the unjustifiable assumption of absolute space and time, just as this puzzle requires you to abandon the unjustifiable assumption that one of the pets is a fish.

You are correct that as a straightforward logic puzzle, this one is not particularly difficult. That, together with the "98% thing" is in itself a clue.

 

[daveb]

Actually it's a trick question. The text in the puzzle says that it is solvable. There are 4 pets mentioned in the clues. The 5th pet is not mentioned. Since the puzzle is solvable, there must be a fish as the 5th pet. If the 5th pet is something else, you cannot say who owns the fish, and the puzle is inherently not solvable.

 

[turbo]

Thanks to 1314920 for resurrecting this thread. I took about 7-8 min with a pen and a 3x5" piece of scrap paper. I made two tables. One diagramming the houses and one listing the associations. Using a left to right convention, I got the Norwegian in the first house with a blue house next to him, and the rest of the stuff just fell together.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

The text in the puzzle says that it is solvable.

Yes. The solution is No one has a fish.

 

[Mickey]

What a fun quiz! I got halfway by thinking rationally, and then the rest just started falling into place like guesswork.

Actually it's a trick question. The text in the puzzle says that it is solvable. There are 4 pets mentioned in the clues. The 5th pet is not mentioned. Since the puzzle is solvable, there must be a fish as the 5th pet. If the 5th pet is something else, you cannot say who owns the fish, and the puzle is inherently not solvable.

Sure it is! I actually skipped over the fish question and went straight to the clues. I ended up with a configuration that fit the clues but had one empty spot. Obviously, that empty spot is for the fish.

A fish named "empty."

 

[daveb]

Yes. The solution is No one has a fish.

But that's my point. You can't specifically say that no one has a fish since the clues do not mention that there is no fish. There either could be or couldn't be a fish - you can't determine which (sounds vaguely similar to a possibly dead cat in a box...) Since the puzzle says that it is solvable, the only logical conclusion is that there must be a fish present.