[rookie1ja]

Ships - Back to the Einstein's Riddles
There are 5 ships in a port.

1. The Greek ship leaves at six and carries coffee.
2. The ship in the middle has a black chimney.
3. The English ship leaves at nine.
4. The French ship with a blue chimney is to the left of a ship that carries coffee.
5. To the right of the ship carrying cocoa is a ship going to Marseille.
6. The Brazilian ship is heading for Manila.
7. Next to the ship carrying rice is a ship with a green chimney.
8. A ship going to Genoa leaves at five.
9. The Spanish ship leaves at seven and is to the right of the ship going to Marseille.
10. The ship with a red chimney goes to Hamburg.
11. Next to the ship leaving at seven is a ship with a white chimney.
12. The ship on the border carries corn.
13. The ship with a black chimney leaves at eight.
14. The ship carrying corn is anchored next to the ship carrying rice.
15. The ship to Hamburg leaves at six.

Which ship goes to Port Said? Which ship carries tea?

Spoiler for Solution:

Ships - solution
Spanish ship goes to Port Said and French ship carries tea. However, tea can be carried by the Brazilian ship, too, if you understood position ‘to the right’ as anywhere on the right side from the given point (not only right next to).

 ships-solution.gif (20.34K)
Number of downloads: 5864

[las1261]

I did it! I did it! Yippee!! Hey, I'm not a megabrain like some of you, so I'm happy!!

[BoilingOil]

I've found an alternative way of solving this puzzle, which may not work for all puzzles of this type. I just looked for lines that had common factors, and combined these lines to a longer one containing all the factors or the short lines it was made from.

For example: lines 1 and 15 both speak of a ship leaving at 6. Combining them, I could say: The Greek ship carries coffee for Hamburg and leaves at 6. Having made this combined sentence, I can now delete lines 1 and 15, and my information has become more compact without losing accuracy

I kept this going until I was left with only five sentences each carrying all the available information on one ship. The information implied in the questions was then easily added in to complete the two not-yet-complete lines.

It's a nice one... It kept me busy for an hour or two.

BoilingOil

[try n take me on]

hmmmmmm this is one of the longest one i have can u plz rephrase it lol.

[try n take me on]

las1261, on Sep 6 2007, 08:18 PM, said:

I did it! I did it! Yippee!! Hey, I'm not a megabrain like some of you, so I'm happy!!

No u didnt why dont ya post the answer huh.huh.huh!??!?!??!?!?? <_<

[grottylittlewanker]

That was a tough one! I tried to do it in my head, but gave up and did it on paper... I ended up guessing that the French had the tea though... it was between them and Brazil! I got everything right pretty much though!

Took about an hour to do.

[jilliankay]

Well, I have two answers


What I think Einstein's *REAL* answer would be:

Spoiler for the REAL answer:

Technically, I think the answer is "we don't know". Nothing in the clues says "Said" or "Tea", so the french ship could be carrying tobacco, and the Spanish ship could be going to India...we just don't know.

And if I took everything at face value:

Spoiler for the answer if you play nice, and my quick(ish) method for getting it.:

since i really like doing these puzzles, I went ahead and figured it out even though the real answer is quick and boring. It took about 15 minutes to get French = Tea & Spanish = Said (like everyone else got).

I did this by making a table, and putting the positions at the top (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, assuming 5 was the border). Then down the left side i put the categories (Nationality, time, color, load, destination). In each square, I put a tiny initial of each possibility (ie, in each square on the time row i wrote "5 6 7 8 9") and left a large blank space to put the final answer.

I then followed the clues, starting with the most obvious: Black is in the 3rd port. Once you know that black = 3rd, then you cross out black from all other ports. Continue following the clues, crossing out the information you know can't be true in each port.

It's important to consider relative position..ie, if 7pm is to the right of White, then you know that 7pm can't be to the right of any other color, so since black is in 3rd, 7pm can't be in 4th and you cross it out. Also, 7pm can't be in 1st, cause nothing is on it's left. You also know that 7pm and white can't be together, so you can make a little note to the side about that.

Eventually, all options will be crossed out but one, and you can deduce that one to be true.

That might be the obvious method to most, but thought I'd share for those who haven't thought of it.


I completely applaud those who said they did in their heads!

[Syuk-kun]

i got my own method,juz simply put all the clues roughly,theres no need to arrange anything at all, as an example
French Blue
Greek 6.00 coffee Hamburg Red
5.00 Genoa
Brazil Manila

and so on,
after using almost all the clues, except certain clue that determined the position of the ships, for that clue, put it into the table of 5x5 table
5 row and 5 column,after that u can see its quite easy to solve, at this point, the only thing u need to do is simply find the correct place to placing all the clues given, well this is my method and i solve it in roughly 10 minutes

[Lithinir]

Haha. This is one was loooooooong....took me a while....
But, I still didnt figure it out....lol

Anyway, I love Einsteins riddles!

[talk24.7]

ok, so I figured it out , and the Spanish ship goes to Port Said, and the French ship carries Tea!!!!!!!!!! I am so good!