This riddle was not invented by me, but I have changed all the details to avoid it being easy to look up the canonical answer.
There are 5 apartments in a row. In each apartment is a person with a unique hair color, nationality and preferred musical style. Every person is an artist in a unique medium. Each of the 5 front doors is colored a unique color. So, we’re facing all 5 doors in front of us, and I give you the following information:
The guy with Black hair listens to Classical Music
The Photographer listens to Electronic Dance Music.
The guy next door to the Indian guy listens to Classical Music.
The middle door is painted Teal.
The sculptor’s door is painted pink.
The red head is the right-hand neighbor (from our pov looking at the doors) of the Brunette.
The man who listens to Jazz lives in the apartment next to the Brazilian.
The oil painter lives next to the guy with grey hair.
The red head has a purple door.
The Digital Painter has blonde hair.
The Watercolor Painter is Canadian.
The oil painter lives in the first (leftmost) apartment.
The guy with the Orange door likes Reggae.
The Australian likes Hip Hop.
So, whose door is White? And what medium does the Kenyan use for his art?
This is deducible, but not easily. In fact all 5 properties of all 5 apartments are deducible.
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…this is giving me ‘lockdown’ vibes, in reminding me of the online communities of puzzles, online parties, quizzes, and cooking shows etc.
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I’ve got weights today, so your puzzle will have to wait until tomorrow…
White Pink Teal Orange Purple
Oil Painter Sculptor Digital Painter Watercolor Painter Photographer
Black Grey Blonde Brunette Red
Classical Jazz Hip Hop Reggae Elec Dance
Brazilian Indian Australian Canadian Kenyan
(MOD EDIT: blurred spoiler, click to reveal – Carleas)
15 min before work
15-30 (?) min at work … even explained it, trying to recruit a helper to enjoy it …
I think I just did about an hour or less w/o any energy…
Here’s how I approached the problem (hiding spoilers).
Description:
I made a grid with the 5 houses and the 5 attributes (hair, door color, art, music, nationality). I started on paper, but switched to a spreadsheet because it made it easier to track and to copy the current state when I had to make a guess (and to undo when I messed something up).
@Ichthus, my setup looked a lot like yours, but I went to the spreadsheet just before I started cutting out slips of paper with different words on them!
Application
House 1
House 2
House 3
House 4
House 5
Hair
Bl-R-Br-Y-G
Bl-R-Br-Y-G
Bl-R-Br-Y-G
Bl-R-Br-Y-G
Bl-R-Br-Y-G
Music
C-E-J-R-H
C-E-J-R-H
C-E-J-R-H
C-E-J-R-H
C-E-J-R-H
Art
Ph-S-O-Pa-W
Ph-S-O-Pa-W
Ph-S-O-Pa-W
Ph-S-O-Pa-W
Ph-S-O-Pa-W
Color
T-Pi-Pu-O-W
T-Pi-Pu-O-W
T-Pi-Pu-O-W
T-Pi-Pu-O-W
T-Pi-Pu-O-W
Nationality
I-B-C-A-K
I-B-C-A-K
I-B-C-A-K
I-B-C-A-K
I-B-C-A-K
In each cell, I put all the possibilities, and as I eliminated possibilities I removed them.
Then I made similar smaller tables representing each rule:
Rule 1
Rule 2
Hair
Bl
Music
C
E
Art
Ph
Color
Nationality
Then I just applied the rules over and over, removing possibilities and narrowing down. I started with rules 4 and 12, because they narrow some cells down all the way. Once you know 12, rule 8 tells you another cell. With those three rules, the table looks like this:
