Results of Zeno's Challenge #35

Here is the original challenge, followed by an elegant response by Jim Anderson, with a solution comment submitted by Shari. Congratulations!!!!! We received over 600 responses, many of which were correct, and over 50 incorrect replies! Keep up the effort:)

...Ron Barnette

THE FACTS

1. There are five houses in five different colors.
2. In each house lives a person of a different nationality.
3. These five owners drink a certain beverage, smoke a certain brand of
   cigarette and keep a certain pet.
4. No owners have the same pet, smoke the same brand of smoke or drink
   the same drink.

THE 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 Mall rears 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 Blend lives next to the one who keeps cats.
11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
12. The owner who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.
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.

The question is: WHO OWNS FISH?

(And, by the way, what of the allegation that Einstein wrote this late in the 19th C?)

Jim Anderson
 
 Solution to #35:
The Norwegian lives on the end, hence lives next to blue only.  Since white and green are next to each other, and the Brit is in red, the Norwegian lives in the yellow house on the end and smokes Dunhill.  This rules out all  beverages for him except water. Thus the person next to the Norwegian lives in a blue house, smokes Blend, and has horses; this rules out the Brit, the German, and the Swede, leaving the Dane.  The person next to the Dane is in the middle and because he drinks milk, his house is not green (hence either red or white) and he does not smoke Blue Master.  Since the Swede does not raise birds, he doesn't smoke Pall Mall.  The smokers of Dunhill, Blend, and Prince are known, so the Swede smokes Blue Master, drinks beer, and thus lives in the white house.  Then the German lives in the green house and drinks coffee.  Since all other beverages are now known, the Brit in the red house must drink milk and live in the middle, and since the other smokers are known, he must smoke Pall Malls and raise birds.  The Dane lives next to a cat owner, and since the Brit on one side owns birds, the Norwegian on the other owns cats.  Since we now know that the Norwegian has cats, the Dane horses, the Brit birds, and the Swede dogs, the answer is: the German owns fish.

Shari, from Baltimore, adds:

comments: First, Pall Mall Cigarettes were not introduced until 1899, so it is unlikely that Einstein had heard of them prior to 1900, especially since they did not become popular until the early 1900s.