How Smart Are You Really? THE HARDEST PUZZLE IN THE WORLD

Page 1 of 3 [ 33 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2, 3  Next

mjs82
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 20 Jun 2005
Age: 42
Gender: Female
Posts: 3,166

05 Jun 2010, 6:46 am

You think you're smart?

This has been called the hardest riddle in the world. 99.999% of people can't figure it out. *sob*

Any how - see if you can come up with the right answer. 99.999% of you will be wrong. But the answer will shock you!! !



THE PUZZLE:

Mr Pink lives in a blue house three houses down from Mr Blue who lives in a green house. Mr Green lives in a brown house one street over from Mr Red who lives in a black house. Mr Grey lives in a grey house next door to Mr Pink and Mr Yellow who lives in a lime house. Mr Burgandy who looks like Mr Red but isn't related lives in a black house next door to Mr Red and Mr Black who lives in a yellow house next to Mr Brown. Mr Brown's house is also blue. Mr Pink has a red car, Mr Blue has a black car, Mr Green has brown car, Mr Brown has a red car, Mr Grey has a black car, Mr Grey has a pink car, Mr Yellow catches a yellow bus, Mr Burgandy carpools with Mr Grey who drives past Mr Orange on their way to pick up Mr Red. There are only two streets in the town, Red Street and Yellow Street and Red street connects into Yellow street on the left hand side of Red. No two houses of the same colour are next to one another. If there are four houses on both streets and only houses on one side of each street and Mr Pink lives on the end of Red street, then -

ON WHAT STREET DOES MR ORANGE LIVE?
AND HOW MANY HOUSES AWAY FROM MR PINK IS HE?

This will cause most of you to collapse with exhaustion. I will give $100 via paypal to the first person who posts the correct answer and their working out on here.



carltcwc
Deinonychus
Deinonychus

User avatar

Joined: 28 Mar 2007
Age: 39
Gender: Male
Posts: 316

05 Jun 2010, 8:00 am

First of all it is never stated if Mr.Orange is at home when they drive by him. Im guessing that Mr.Orange is either somebodys pet, or buried in somebodys back yard and someone killed Mr.Orange because there aren't enough houses unless some people live in the same house. Mr.Burgandy and Mr.Red must also live in a duplex because they live next door and both their houses are black. Either that or there are two Mr.Red's but seeing that there would be nine houses when there are only sussposed to be eight tells me they are in a duplex. Also when Mr.Burgandy is carpooling with Mr.Grey when they are going to go pick up Mr.Red it does not state where they are starting from or if they are picking up Mr.Red from home or not. There are lots of loop holes in this.
Anyways, Mr.Orange lives at Mr.Pink's house on Red Street.



greytempest
Tufted Titmouse
Tufted Titmouse

User avatar

Joined: 28 Apr 2010
Age: 32
Gender: Male
Posts: 43
Location: London, England

05 Jun 2010, 8:45 am

Grrrrrr... You've got me obsessed by this now..

And I thought I had the answer but then rechecked the details and found it most likely isnt right...

I hope you're happy..



reginaterrae
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 19 May 2009
Age: 56
Gender: Female
Posts: 11,220
Location: Maryland, USA

05 Jun 2010, 10:28 pm

mjs82 wrote:
Mr Red who lives in a black house....
Mr Burgandy who looks like Mr Red but isn't related lives in a black house next door to Mr Red....
No two houses of the same colour are next to one another.


Either you've typed it out wrong or carltcwc is right about them living in a duplex. At any rate there are 10 Misters and only 8 houses, so I'm going to go with the duplex idea.

You've named 7 colors of houses, matching all of the people to house colors except for Mr. Orange. There are 2 blues and 2 blacks mentioned. We've already determined that there is a black duplex, inhabited by Mssrs. Red & Burgundy.

Mr. Pink lives on an end of Red St. Next to him is Mr. Grey, and next is Mr. Yellow. The 3 are in 3 different colored houses. I am interpreting "next door" to mean side by side, therefore on the same street. There is room for one more house on this street.

Mr. Pink lives 3 houses down from Mr. Blue. So far, Mr. Blue could be at the opposite end of the same street with Mr. Pink, or if Mr. Pink is on the "left" end of Red St., Mr. Blue could be 3 houses in on Yellow St.

Mr. Green and Mr. Red live on different streets, and neither of their house colors match Mssrs. Pink, Grey, Yellow, or Blue; so if one of them is on Red St., there is no room there for Mr. Blue. Therefore Mr. Blue is on Yellow St. in the 3rd house up from the intersection (3 away from Mr. Pink, who must be at the intersection end of Red St).

So far we have, starting at the end of Yellow St. away from Red St.: blank, Mr. Blue, blank, blank, Mr. Pink, Mr. Grey, Mr. Yellow, blank.

Mssrs. Red & Burgundy live in a duplex in between Mr. Black and Mr. Brown. There are not 3 consecutive "blanks" left, only 2 in between Mr. Pink & Mr. Blue. Mr. Brown's house is the same color as Mr. Pink's, so he must live in the same house. So far we have, on Yellow St.: blank, Mr. Blue, Mr. Black, Mssrs. Red & Burgundy at the intersection; on Red St., starting at the intersection, Mssrs. Pink & Brown, Mr. Grey, Mr. Yellow, blank.

Mr. Orange is between Mr. Grey and Mssrs. Red/Burgundy ... Mssrs. Red/Burgundy live next door to Mr. Brown, who shares a house with Mr. Pink, who is next door to Mr. Grey.

So Mr. Orange lives with Mssrs. Brown & Pink, in their blue house, on Red St.

Yeah, so I agree with carltcwc. Though actually I think you just made this up, given that
mjs82 wrote:
Mr Grey has a black car, Mr Grey has a pink car
, (irrelevant though that is), and who are the "they" who are on their way to pick up Mr. Red with Mr. Grey driving? It implies that it's Mr. Burgundy & Mr. Grey, but you've said that Mr. Burgundy lives next to Mr. Red, so how can they drive past Mr. Orange on their way? So yeah, I suspect you're just trying to yank our chains.... but it was fun anyway, I like logic puzzles!



DaWalker
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 11 Jul 2009
Gender: Male
Posts: 10,837

05 Jun 2010, 10:43 pm

Mr. Orange obviously lives on Yellow street, based on the fact that Red Street is full.



Ancient_Chaos
Deinonychus
Deinonychus

User avatar

Joined: 3 Jun 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 345

06 Jun 2010, 1:20 am

Assuming the statement about the duplex is true and that all houses are filled, if Grey and Burgundy drive by Orange on their way to get Red then it is implied that either:

A) Orange is walking by at that time and lives with another random indeterminate person

B) Orange also lives in that building, between the two in some diferent colored section (which would probably relieve the color technicality)

C) Orange is homeless and happens to be in that area

Assuming B to be true as it seems the most likely Orange lives on Yellow Street and is 4(.3 repeating) houses away from pink.

If A were to be true then Orange either lives on Red Street and is from 0 to 2 houses away from Pink or lives on Yellow Street and is from 3 to 6 houses away from pink

If C was true then Orange lives on whichever street he chooses and as such lives any real number less than 6 houses away from pink.



mjs82
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 20 Jun 2005
Age: 42
Gender: Female
Posts: 3,166

06 Jun 2010, 3:04 am

Wow I'm impressed, one of you almost has it but not quite. To that person, I say genius.



Ancient_Chaos
Deinonychus
Deinonychus

User avatar

Joined: 3 Jun 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 345

06 Jun 2010, 3:22 am

Another option, while a bit contradictory to the way ownership is stated, is that Orange may live with Grey and as such is passed by within the house in the morning when exiting and would explain the two cars at said house, in which case Orange would live on Red Street and be one house away from Pink.

Or another quite obvious thing I'm not sure how I missed, Orange, being the composite of red and yellow, (xrxx xyxx) is in the intersection, if not in the center than slightly closer to yellow as that would put him directly in the middle of both instances of red and yellow in the problem. Which, if he was actually living at a house would put him in Blue's (neutralizing color) house living three houses away from Pink and on Yellow Street.

Yet another option, Yellow, living on Red, when crossing to get to the Yellow bus (I'm assuming called such because it is on Yellow Street) Takes on the Alias of Orange (also fitting with the crossing color boundaries, etc.)



carltcwc
Deinonychus
Deinonychus

User avatar

Joined: 28 Mar 2007
Age: 39
Gender: Male
Posts: 316

06 Jun 2010, 5:27 am

I think I know the anwser now. Mr. Orange lives in a Duplex with Mr. Pink where Mr. Pink's door is facing red street and Mr.Oranges door is facing yellow street.



katzefrau
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 11 Apr 2010
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,835
Location: emerald city

07 Jun 2010, 2:27 am

mjs82 wrote:
You think you're smart?


this is horribly written.

for example:


Mr Grey lives in a grey house next door to Mr Pink and Mr Yellow who lives in a lime house


= Mr Grey lives next door to Mr Pink and also to Mr Yellow who live in different houses, of which Mr Yellow's is lime? or Mr Grey lives next door to a house in which Mr Pink and Mr Yellow both reside? (or: either is possible?)

Red street connects into Yellow street on the left hand side of Red

unless you have indicated that the streets can or cannot intersect between houses and drawn us a map where L=West and Red street runs east-west or have otherwise oriented us on what the "left hand side" of Red Street means, this is utterly useless information. (also, you could mean Mr Red's house rather than Red Street.

similar there are four houses on both streets

i can assume by this you mean there are four houses on each of the two streets (because there are so many people) but what you have actually said is "the two streets contain, in total, four houses"

i would love to see this puzzle rewritten and punctuated in a way that makes the intention of the statements clear. till then it is making my head spin, not because of the difficulty of the puzzle but because it is written so terribly that i can't be sure what you mean by some of it.

Ancient_Chaos i love your attempts at making sense of this. brilliant.


_________________
Now a penguin may look very strange in a living room, but a living room looks very strange to a penguin.


mjs82
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 20 Jun 2005
Age: 42
Gender: Female
Posts: 3,166

09 Jun 2010, 4:32 am

The puzzle is rewritten exactly as it is. One of you almost has the answer but has a made a mistaken final assumption.

The trick to the puzzle is to ignore the colours.



b9
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 14 Aug 2008
Age: 52
Gender: Male
Posts: 12,003
Location: australia

09 Jun 2010, 7:15 am

yellow street 4 houses away from pink



Janissy
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 5 May 2009
Age: 57
Gender: Female
Posts: 6,450
Location: x

09 Jun 2010, 8:42 am

I couldn't do it.

I knew the only chance I had of doing this was to draw a street map so that I could keep track of where the houses were and on which streets. But every time I looked back at the screen after drawing another house on my map I would track back to "yellow house" instead of "Mr. Yellow" (or whichever color) and wind up putting the house in the wrong place because of that error. Which I suppose is the whole point of the puzzle. Many people, myself included, will constantly mentally overlap color of name/color of house/color of car/color of street and make transcription errors on their map. I know you said the trick to the puzzle was to ignore the colors and I tried to do that but my brain just wouldn't let me.

I am impressed that many people here managed to sort this out without the transcription errors to their map that I kept making because of that confusion.

I am especially impressed if anybody here managed to solve the puzzle without even drawing a map.



Ancient_Chaos
Deinonychus
Deinonychus

User avatar

Joined: 3 Jun 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 345

09 Jun 2010, 11:32 am

Yet another option, Orange may live with Yellow and either use one of Grey's cars or also walk to the bus in which case Grey would likely pass him either way.(putting him one house away and on Red Street).



reginaterrae
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 19 May 2009
Age: 56
Gender: Female
Posts: 11,220
Location: Maryland, USA

09 Jun 2010, 12:56 pm

mjs82 wrote:
The puzzle is rewritten exactly as it is. One of you almost has the answer but has a made a mistaken final assumption.

The trick to the puzzle is to ignore the colours.


How ignore the colors, if colors are among the conditions of the puzzle? No two houses of the same color side by side, etc.



Janissy
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 5 May 2009
Age: 57
Gender: Female
Posts: 6,450
Location: x

09 Jun 2010, 4:25 pm

reginaterrae wrote:
mjs82 wrote:
The puzzle is rewritten exactly as it is. One of you almost has the answer but has a made a mistaken final assumption.

The trick to the puzzle is to ignore the colours.


How ignore the colors, if colors are among the conditions of the puzzle? No two houses of the same color side by side, etc.


That's what makes it so hard. I ultimately couldn't solve it because I kept getting transcription errors on my map from losing track of whether the word "red" in my head referred to Mr. Red, red house, red car or Red Street and so on with all the colors.

Clearly there are people, such as posters here, who can keep track of all these people and houses and cars and streets and not mentally superimpose them even though they have the same name. I could see that the trick would be to try not to think of the colors as colors or I would superimpose them but this was a mental trick I could not pull off. Other posters can but not me and I guess not you either.