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Leaving school: An Einstein Puzzle by Dilip D’Souza
This form of the riddle is attributed to Albert Einstein. It is said that 98% of people are incapable of solving it. Give it a shot. There’s even a brief guide to help you along.
A fading photograph from the 1970s shows three best friends, posing minutes after picking up their school-leaving exam results. Left to right as they face us smilingly, they are Lara, Madhavi and Sameera.
Just for fun, each girl wears her favourite shoe brand, is wolfing down the snack she favoured in the morning break, and holds up a sign with her school-leaving marks.
You can’t see the photo, but here’s what I can tell you about it and the girls:
1) Lara hates idli.
2) The girl wearing Bata scored 75%.
3) The chhole-bhature is somewhere to the right of Lara.
4) The Bata shoes are to the left of the steaming idlis.
5) The vada-eater isn’t wearing Adidas.
6) The girl who scored 85% is to the right of the Adidas shoes.
7) The idli-eater is also to the right of the Adidas shoes.
(Note: ‘left’ and ‘right’ here mean as you look at the picture).
Questions: who scored 80%? Who’s eating chhole? Who’s wearing Carona?
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How do you solve such a puzzle?
One way is to make a grid, as in the diagram below. The names of the three people along the top, and their various characteristics on the left, grouped by their type. In this case, the three shoe brands, followed by the three scores, then the three snacks.
Now go through the clues and mark the appropriate spaces each time you learn something. Cycle through them until you’ve marked all the spaces with either a tick or a cross.
I’ll start this off with the first three clues.
#1 lets us place an ‘X’ to rule out Lara eating idlis. #2 tells us nothing, so move on. #3 tells us that Lara doesn’t eat chhole-bhature, so place an ‘X’ there too. But this immediately allows us to place a tick to show that she eats vadas (since she doesn’t eat either idli or chhole). And that tick immediately allows us to ‘X’ out the two boxes to the right on the ‘Vada’ row — because if Lara eats vadas, neither Madhavi nor Sameera does.
The rest? Up to you. One point to note: Does #4 allow a certain box to get an ‘X’?
Scroll down for the answer
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This week’s answers
Madhavi scored 80% and is eating chhole.
Sameera wears Carona.
