Einstein's puzzle: Can you sovle it?

The trick for me was to adapt from my first line of thought and put the cats and the water in the same house. My first inclination was that cats should go on one side of the person who smokes blends and water should go on the other.

 

LOL - does that T-Shirt have Joe-bob redneck written across the back? I'd feel a bit out of place if it just said Menza

 

KavMan,

Do you play countertrend and short the pops? "Just had to do it the other way"

 

As long as the answer is right it's all good

 

You don't have to always get a right answer if you can somehow prove the original question was wrong to begin with.

(however, if Einstein asked it, it must be good)

 

There is no way that only 2% of people can answer this. I'm smart enough to know I'm not in the top 2% when it comes to logic although I did do it in less than 15 minutes while watching the tube.

 

I too thought of this issue.

I'd attribute this to the 'Flynn effect', i.e. the average IQ back when the puzzle was written was far lower than today's average.

"Compared to the previous generation, the number of people who score high enough to be classified as "genius" has increased more than 20 times."

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/FLYNNEFF.html

 

2.1% of the population has an IQ above 130'ish according to the Stanford-Binet test. The second sigma of deviation from the mean according to this scale is right around 130.

.1% of the population is three sigmas away from the mean of 100 -- having IQ's above 145 or below 55.

An IQ isn't a perfect measurement of intelligence. Someone with a 130 IQ could probably figure out something that someone with a 145 IQ could figure out, it would just take them longer. Among people with 130+ IQ's include:

Bosch
Durer
Copernicus
Kepler
Mendel
Newton
Einstein (obviously)
Pascal
Beethoven
Mozart
Chopin
Schubert
Tchaikovsky
Blake
Kafka
Poe
Heminhway
J.R. Token

However, I doubt Beethoven could have solved this as quickly as Copernicus.

 

they once gave us this puzzle as a test in school ... more than 2% were able to solve it ... including me

 

The Flynn effect could make sense given better numerous factors such as better nutrition, less parental smoking, etc. However, i still find it very hard to believe that only 2% of the people in the 50's could answer this one.

alphie trying to treat this like only those with a high IQ can solve this one is BS.