Rahul Mittal - Five Houses

I was sent this riddle in an email from Navin Kadambi, but am unfortunately unaware of the original author.

The following facts are provided:

There are 5 houses in 5 different colors.
In each house lives a person with a different nationality.
These 5 owners drink a certain beverage, smoke a certain brand of cigar and keep a certain pet.
No two owners have the same pet, smoke the same brand of cigar or drink the same drink.

Additionally, the following hints are provided:

The British lives in a red house.
The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
The Dane drinks tea.
The green house is on the left of the white house (it also means they are next door to each other).
The green house owner drinks coffee.
The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
The man living in the house right in the center drinks milk.
The Norwegian lives in the first house.
The man who smokes Blend lives next to the one who keeps cats.
The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
The owner who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.
The German smokes Prince.
The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
The man who smokes Blend has a neighbor who drinks water.

The question to be solved is, who keeps fish?

Solution

To solve the Five Houses riddle, I proceeded with deductions in the order listed below. I kept a simple table shown at the bottom and simply kept updating it with information from each deduction (start with a blank table).

House 3 owner drinks milk (hint 8).
Norwegian lives in the house 1 (hint 9).
Since Norwegian lives next to the blue house (hint 14), house 2 must be blue.
Since British lives in red house (hint 1) and green house is left of white house, these three houses must be houses 3, 4, and 5. Order is not known, although red house can only be house 3 or 5.
This leaves the yellow house, which must be house 1.
Yellow house owner smokes Dunhill (hint 7).
Horse owner lives next to Dunhill smoker (hint 11).
Swede must live in house 3, 4 or 5 since he owns dogs (hint 2) and there is already a Norwegian in house 1 and a horse owner in house 2.
Further, Swede must live in white or green house since red house is already taken by British (hint 1).
House 4 or 5 is green and owned by coffee drinker (hint 5) because house 3 owner drinks milk. But green house must be to left of white house (hint 4). Hence green and white houses are 4 and 5 respectively.
Fill in the blanks� House 3 is red, and hence occupied by British (hint 1). Also, green house owner drinks coffee (hint 5).
Hence Swede must live in house 4 or 5. 3 is now taken by British.
Dane must live in house 2 or 5 because he drinks tea (hint 3).
Blue master smoker lives in house 2 or 5 because he drinks beer (hint 12).
Therefore since house 2 or 5 drink either tea or beer, house 1 must be the water drinker.
Blend smoker must be house 2 (hint 15).
From 14 above, Blue Master smoker must be in house 5.
Beer drinker is in house 5 (hint 12).
House 2 owner must drink tea from 15 above.
So the Dane lives in house 2 (hint 3).
German must live in house 4 because house 5 owner smokes blue master.
Fill in the blanks - Swede is in house 5 (only one left), house 4 owner smokes Prince (hint 13), and house 3 owner smokes Pall Mall (only one left).
But Pall Mall owner owns birds (hint 6).
House 5 owner owns dogs (hint 2).
House 1 must be cat owner (hint 10).

Therefore the only house that hasn't been assigned a pet yet is house 4. Assuming that the 5th pet type is in fact fish, then we must conclude:

The German living in the green colored house 4 who drinks coffee and smokes Prince in fact also owns fish.

Table 1: Summary of Deductions
	House 1	House 2	House 3	House 4	House 5
Color	Yellow	Blue	Red	Green	White
Owner's Nationality	Norwegian	Dane	British	German	Swede
Beverage	Water	Tea	Milk	Coffee	Beer
Cigar Brand	Dunhill	Blend	Pall Mall	Prince	Blue Master
Pet	Cat	Horse	Bird	Fish	Dog