Elementary POW, December 9-13,1996


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Five houses of different colors stand in a row. Each is owned by a person with a different nationality, hobby, pet, and favorite drink:
  1. the English person lives in the red house,
  2. the Spaniard owns dogs,
  3. coffee is drunk in the green house,
  4. the Ukrainian drinks tea,
  5. the green house is directly to the right of the white one,
  6. the stamp collector owns snails,
  7. the antique collector lives in the yellow house,
  8. the person in the middle house drinks milk,
  9. the Norwegian lives in the first house,
  10. the person who sings lives next to the person with the fox,
  11. the person who gardens drinks juice,
  12. the antique collector lives next to the person with the horse,
  13. the Japanese person's hobby is cooking, and
  14. the Norwegian lives next to the blue house.

What I would like to know is: Who drinks water, who owns the zebra, and how in the world did you figure this out?

This week's mentors were from Lisa Lavelle's accelerated Geometry class at the Maret School in Washington, D.C.
Thank you all for participating and attempting our logic puzzle. We had many solutions submitted. Several of you had good methods for solving the puzzle, but you missed some of the hidden contradictions. Detailed solutions follow the list of successful participants.
The correct solution to the December 9-13 Elementary Problem of the Week:

Correct Solutions submitted by:

Highlighted Solutions

***************
 Doug Bast, grade 3
Western Salisbury School
(Mrs. Geschel)
Allentown, PA

       First, I put all the clues on little pieces of paper.  Each piece
had a nationality, drink, hobby, pet, or color house on it.
        I arranged them to the clues.  When I found that green, red, and
white were the last three houses, I had to do some "Guess and Checking".


    RESULTS

        COLOR OF HOUSE         
 yellow          blue            red		white           green

       NATIONALITY                     
Norway       Ukraine     England	Spain           Japan

        BEVERAGE                        
water            tea	milk             juice             coffee

        HOBBY                                
antiques       singer	stamps      gardener     cooking

        PET                                       
fox	          horse       snails        dogs               zebra

***************
Margaret Bowerman's Fourth Grade Class
Kyrene de la Mariposa
Tempe, Arizona

The five people who live in different colored houses are:

Norwegian Ukranian       English        Spaniard       Japan
yellow         blue      red       white          green
water          tea       milk      juice          coffee
antiques       sings          stamps         gardens        cooks
fox       horse          snails         dog       zebra

The person from Japan has the zebra and the Norwegian drinks water.  We were
able to determine this by setting up a logic grid and recording our
responses with a Y for yes or an N for no.  We put all the direct
information down first (English person - red house, Spaniard - owns dogs,
etc.).  We then looked for inferential information (the Norwegian can't live
in the blue house since he is first and lives next door to the blue house
and he can't live in the red house (English).  He also can't live in the
white or green house since they are next to each other.  He has to live in
the yellow house.).  We made several decisions based on each discovery we
 made (the Ukranian can't live in the first house (Norwegian) or the third
house (he drinks tea, not milk) until we were able to complete an entire
section of the grid (color, hobby, pet, drink).  We also put the information
into a table (like above) to help us visualize the information.  We then
checked over all the information to see if our table matched the information
given.

***************
by Zach Larson, Dustin Smith (Mrs. Horton's 5th grade, Emerson Elementary
school, Madison, WI)

The Norwegian drinks water, and the Japanese owns the zebra. Here's how we
figured it out:

We drew the five houses. We put the Norwegian under the 1st house, then we
put the blue house next to the Norwegian. Then we figured out that the green
house was to the right of the white house. Then we knew the red house was in
the middle. Then it said the milk was in the middle house. The paper said
that antiques were in the middle house. Then we started guessing the others
until we figured it out.

yellow       blue       red       white       green
Norwegian    Ukranian   English   Spaniard    Japanese
water        tea        milk      juice       coffee
fox          horse      snails    dog         zebra
antiques     singer     stamps    gardner     cooking

***************
We really liked the involvement of the whole family in this one -- what a
great activity to bring everyone together!

Conrad Kirby
Grade 5 (Ms. Williams)
Burton Geo-World Elementary
Durham NC
brh@acpub.duke.edu

The Norwegian drinks water and the Japanese owns the zebra. I figured this
out by making a chart and crossing out possibilities with the information I
had. At first, I tried it by myself and got to the same point that my mom
did when she worked on it, and that was that the Norwegian drank the water.
But we couldn't figure out the rest unless we guessed whether the
Englishman drank milk or juice. But we wanted to figure it out without
guessing, so then we worked on it together. We got a little further (for
example, we found out _everything_ about the second house), but still
didn't know who owned the zebra. So then my dad started working with us and
told us to make a bigger chart, and when we did, and we all worked together
crossing things out, and making sure that we crossed them out for _all_ the
boxes, we finally figured the whole thing out.

House   Color     Person         Pet       Hobby       Drink
1       yellow    Norwegian      fox       antiques    water
2       blue      Ukrainian      horse     singing     tea
3       red       English        snails    stamps      milk
4       white     Spanish        dogs      gardening   juice
5       green     Japanese       zebra     cooking     coffee

P.S. from Conrad's mom: We worked this out the Friday night of the
"pre-release," spending ALL EVENING on it. We all worked separately at
first, and finally ended up combining forces.

***************
And here's one by French students in Canada!

The Norwegian drinks water, the Japanese owns the zebra.
My students (ages 10 to 13, grade: secondary 1, College Marie de France
,Montreal, Canada) and I drew a large table with each nationality, colour,
drink, animal and hobby on the blackboard. We crossed out items every time
we found that something was impossible. We first found those informations:
norwegian       blue    milk    white   green
yellow                  red             coffee
antiques        horse   english
water
We had the answer to your first question.
To figure out who owned the zebra, we found that the Norwegian could only
own the fox or the zebra so we tried with the fox, again crossing out any
item that could not belong somewhere:
norwegian       blue            milk            white           green
yellow                          red                             coffee
antiques        horse           english
water
fox             sings
                ukrainian
                tea             stamps
                                snails          juice
                                                gardens         cooking
                                                spaniard        japanese
                                                dogs            zebra
That is how we found that the japanese had the zebra. It all worked out and
the students were thrilled. They weren't too happy when I told them that we
should check that our solution was unique. so we tried to give the zebra to
the Norwegian but always found something wrong later on.

I hope my explanations are clear enough, forgive the english mistakes as I
am French ans so are my students (Quebec).
Thank you for a fun experience, I hope we can try another problem sometime.
        Helene Lambert and her 26 marvellous students

***************
 Casey Gorish
        Mrs. McMahon 
        Murray Middle School
        Ridgecrest CA

       I found that the Norwegian, who lives in the first house, drinks
water.  I also found that the Japanese, who lives in the last house, owns
the zebra.  I found this answer by writing the combinations I knew down on
flashcards.  I put down things like Spaniard-dog, English-red, etc.  Then I
kept erasing and switching the cards until I eliminated everything and
found the answer.  More than once I had to start over.  I also had to
assume some combinations and see if they worked.  This is how I found my
answer.

***************
Grade 6        Mrs. Pat Rieker
York Avenue Elementary School
Lansdale, PA  

We solved the problem by constructing a table.  We first inserted all the
"given" information, such as "the Norwegian lives in the first house." We
then listed all the "negative possibilities," such as, if the middle
house is the home of the milk-drinker, then the Ukranian cannot live
there because she drinks tea. Then we used "guess, check, and revise," to
fit in the rest of the answers.  The answer is: The Norwegian drinks
water and the Japanese owns a zebra.
Submitted by: Jamie Pruitt and Samantha Ruth
 
***************

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