Thursday, June 23, 2011

A Logic Puzzle

My son passed the time today on the Chunnel crafting a logic puzzle. He has graciously offered it to me as blog content...

Alice, Bob, Charlie, Diana and Ed live in 5 one-garage homes on a street, each numbered 1 through 5 (but not necessarily in that order). They drive a Ford, Honda, Nissan, Toyota and Mercedes – also not necessarily in that order. Based on the following clues, who drives which car?
The women drive only Japanese cars.
The Honda is not in Garage 2.
Edward and Alice have adjacent garages.
Even-numbered homes contain only Japanese cars.
Ed and Bob live next door to each other, and Diana’s address is higher than theirs.
Charlie doesn’t like Japanese cars.
The addresses of the Toyota, Ford and Honda are prime numbers.
Alice’s address is more than twice Charlie’s.
The Ford and Nissan belong to next door neighbors.

Having shared logic puzzles before, I know the following disclaimer is necessary: this is a logic puzzle, and not a social or economic statement relating to what women drive or the quality of Japanese cars, so don't bother commenting on off-topic elements. (For the sake of this puzzle, Nissan, Toyota and Honda are the Japanese car manufacturers.) 

Enjoy, and try to be the first to submit the right answer!


Update: evan submitted the first right answer. Hemang Gadhia, Boomer, judic and Harit also submitted correct answers before I published any correct answers in the comments section. Don't read the comments if you wish to still solve this yourself. 

8 comments:

  1. Love it; bringing me back to the LSATs...

    Don't quite have time to do a walk through, but the answers should be, with person, house, car, from top to bottom:

    C B E A D
    1 2 3 4 5
    M T F N H

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  2. How old is your son? A pretty good puzzle overall. Took me about 15 min to finish, which considering the fact that I used to crank these out during LSAT prep, is moderately challenging. Nicely done, and bonus points for the precision of language usage and how key it was for the solve.

    House 1 - Charlie and his Benz
    House 2 - Bob and his Toyota
    House 3 - Ed and his Ford
    House 4 - Alice and her Nissan
    House 5 - Diana and her Honda

    Too bad this wasn't 6 months ago, where I could've parlayed this for an intro. =)

    Hemang

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  3. Alice = Nissan
    Bob = Toyota
    Charlie = Mercdes
    Diane = Honda
    Ed = Ford

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  4. Names/Cars in order of house #
    1 - Charlie: Mercedes
    2 - Bob: Toyota
    3 - Edward: Ford
    4 - Alice: Nissan
    5 - Diana: Honda

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  5. Nice puzzle, thanks for putting it up.

    My answers are:

    1 Charlie Mercedes
    2 Bob Toyota
    3 Edward Ford
    4 Alice Nissan
    5 Diana Honda

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  6. Sylvia1:45 PM

    First house: #1/Charlie/Ford
    Second house: #4/Alice/Nissan
    Third house: #3/Ed/Mercedes
    Fourth house: #2/Bob/Toyota
    Fifth house: #5/Diana/Honda


    Not sure it's the only solution, but I think this one works.

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  7. Congrats to the commenters above who submitted answers before others were published. evan was first.

    Sylvia, 1 is not a prime number. And even if that's debatable, your answer violates the fact that the Ford and Nissan belong to next door neighbors.

    Hemang, he's 12.

    Thanks for playing!

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  8. I took the parenthetical comment in the first sentence to mean that the houses didn't have to be numbered in order. Seemed an odd way to structure this sort of problem and made Garage 2 problematic, but I did have the Ford and Nissan belonging to next door neighbors.

    Should have looked up the definition of prime numbers, but I thought I knew it. Any idea if there is a reason 1 is excluded?

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