Hard Einstein riddles

These are full-size zebra puzzles. The original Einstein’s riddle has five houses and five categories; the first three puzzles here match it, the next three add a sixth category, and the last two put six neighbours on the street.

Very few clues place anything outright. Expect long chains: one clue narrows a pet to two houses, a second ties that pet to a drink, and only a third finally pins the drink down. Every puzzle can still be finished by deduction alone, with no trial and error.

The puzzles

Play any of them in your browser. Your progress is saved on this device, and every puzzle has the answer at the bottom of its page.

A taste of puzzle 1

5 neighbours live in houses 1 to 5. Here are its clues:

1. The pilot ✈️ lives somewhere to the left of Cleo.
2. Dev lives somewhere to the left of the baker 🥖.
3. The poet 🖋️ does not live behind the violet door.
4. The neighbour with the yellow door lives next door to the gardener 🌱.
5. The neighbour with the violet door lives somewhere to the left of the cocoa drinker 🍫.
6. The neighbour with the violet door lives somewhere to the left of the neighbour with the white door.
7. Bram lives directly to the left of the chess player ♟️.
8. The juice drinker 🧃 is also the gardener 🌱.
9. The baker 🥖 lives next door to the doctor 🩺.
10. The juice drinker 🧃 lives next door to the water drinker 💧.
11. Esme lives next door to the neighbour with the yellow door.
12. The cyclist 🚲 lives behind the green door.
13. The neighbour with the red door lives directly to the left of the neighbour with the yellow door.
14. The pilot ✈️ is not the water drinker 💧.
15. Cleo lives next door to the baker 🥖.
16. The chemist ⚗️ lives directly to the left of the neighbour with the yellow door.
17. The chess player ♟️ lives somewhere to the left of the neighbour with the green door.
18. The neighbour with the red door lives somewhere to the left of the juice drinker 🧃.
19. The neighbour with the yellow door lives somewhere to the left of the jazz fan 🎷.
20. The doctor 🩺 lives next door to the neighbour with the yellow door.
21. The baker 🥖 lives next door to the neighbour with the white door.
22. The coffee drinker ☕ is also the poet 🖋️.

Tips for hard zebra puzzles

Write down the edge effects of every position clue before anything else. “The pilot lives directly left of the yellow door” means the pilot isn’t in the last house and the yellow door isn’t in the first, and those small facts compound.

Track links between categories as pairs. If “the baker drinks tea” and you later learn tea is in house 2 or 4, the baker is too, and so is anything linked to the baker.

If you are tempted to guess, look at clues that say what is not true. They are the ones people skim past, and in hard puzzles they usually carry the last step.

Want the classic first?

Try the original 1962 zebra puzzle or the popular “who owns the fish?” version, both with full worked solutions.

Or play today’s daily puzzle, a new street every day from a gentle Monday to a fiendish Sunday.