Is it true that the author of the riddle of Einstein is Albert Einstein himself?

For many years now on the Internet, magazines and books you can find an entertaining logical task, the author of which is called a great scientist. We checked whether Einstein really came up with it.

The plot of riddles is built around five houses, in which five representatives of different nationality live. Each of them prefers a certain drink (in other versions - grows a certain culture), a certain brand of cigarettes (in the children's version - chocolate) and holds a certain animal at home. The full picture of these correspondences is not disclosed, but on the basis of 15 facts about them it is proposed to restore two more. At the same time, how They say Many sources, Albert Einstein came up with the task in childhood, and he allegedly believed that only 2% of humanity could solve the problem in the mind.

The fact that it was Albert Einstein who came up with this task is reported by resources such as "Code", "Ridus", "Favorites", Lada.kz. The puzzle is very popular and on West. It is described in the book Jeremy Stangramam “Entertaining puzzles of Einstein. Make a little gray cells work. ”

We will not focus on the solution of a problem that is quite elementary and does not require mathematical or other special knowledge - there is enough for a conventional sign and exclusion method. Let's try to understand if this task could belong to the creator of the special theory of relativity. The first problem we are faced with when speaking about the classic version of the puzzle is the brands of cigarettes: Old Gold (1926), Kool (1933), Parliament (1931), Lucky Strike (1917) and Chesterfield (1873). The years of the appearance of these brands are indicated in the brackets. It is obvious that Einstein, born in 1879, could see in childhood perhaps the Cherfield cigarettes. However, this is not yet proof, because the details of the tasks could modify over time.

It should be noted that such tasks are a whole genre that was very popular in the West in the middle of the last century. For example, you can look into a book "101 puzzles for thinking and logic"released in 1957, and meet dozens of similar tasks. This genre in English -speaking countries called “Smith -Jones - Robinson's puzzles” in honor of the heroes of one of the first similar tasks, created in 1930 by the famous English compiler of Genry Düdeneni puzzles. As for the puzzle of interest to us, its first appearance in the press dates December 17, 1962. It was published in the international version of the American Life magazine under the name "Who belongs to Zebra?" Send their decisions with a call to readers:

Appearing in such a prestigious publication, the puzzle immediately became popular - it was reprinted as social magazines (Esquire), so Mathematical. We draw attention to the fact that Albert Einstein was neither in her name nor in the description in the early years. And in general, it would be strange to declare a competition for solving an already known historical problem. The attribution took place much later (it is difficult to determine in which publication) and was a fairly obvious marketing course to awaken interest: “Albert Einstein said that only 2% can solve ...”. At the same time, there is no information that the scientist loved simple mathematical puzzles. There is no information about this in letters, performances or articles. There are no other known tasks of this kind of authorship of Einstein.

Thus, there is no evidence in favor of the fact that the author of the famous riddle could be Albert Einstein.

Not true

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