(Roughly) Daily

From the good folks at Coudal Partners, a puzzle purportedly created by Albert Einstein…

There are five houses in a row in different colors. In each house lives a person with a different nationality. The five owners drink a different drink, smoke a different brand of cigar and keep a different pet, one of which is a Walleye Pike.

The question is– who owns the fish?

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 Malls keeps birds.
7. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhills.
8. The man living in the house right in the center drinks milk.
9. The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
10. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the one who smokes Dunhills.
12. The owner who smokes Bluemasters drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Princes.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The man who smokes Blends has a neighbor who drinks water.

There’s nothing up anyone’s sleeve (as though fish had sleeves…); and everything one needs to know is there.

Successful solutions can be confirmed here.  And readers can find a second fish puzzle here, and a little teaser called “Da Vinci’s Other Code” here.

As we scratch our heads, we might wish a Joyeux Anniversaire to silk weaver Joseph Marie Jacquard; he was born on this date in 1752.  Jacquard’s 1805 invention of the programmable power loom, controlled by a series of punched “instruction” cards and capable of weaving essentially any pattern, ignited a technological revolution in the textile industry… indeed, it set off a chain of revolutions: it inspired Charles Babbage in the design of his “Difference Engine” (the ur-computer), and later, Herman Hollerith, who used punched cards in the “tabulator” that he created for the 1890 Census… and in so doing, pioneered the use of those cards for computer input.

Joesph Marie Jacquard (source)