Einstein's Riddle

[CNYCacher]

The puzzle is unsolvable as it is written.  A key piece of data is left out and that is whether the "First" house is leftmost or rightmost.  If the "First" house is interpreted to be on the Left, as I am sure almost everyone would do, since we read left to right and tend to count things left to right in English-speaking countries, then there is a solution.  If the first house is interpreted to be on the right, there is no definite solution, but you can narrow it down to two possibilities.

[charby]

To hell with trying to figure out how you did it Rainman, go break codes or make some serious coin in the stock market or something.

I wish I could, sometimes my brain goes off in some weird direction. I've solved some pretty complex problems without any clue what I did or really any experience in those areas.

[Ned Hamford]

I wonder if he meant only 2% can figure it out without a grid? Hmmmm....

Nope... 98% of the world is just that disappointing.  Plenty redeem themselves in other ways, but I'd still be happier if this were simply a top 50% sort of thing. 

[AmbulanceDriver]

The puzzle is unsolvable as it is written.  A key piece of data is left out and that is whether the "First" house is leftmost or rightmost.  If the "First" house is interpreted to be on the Left, as I am sure almost everyone would do, since we read left to right and tend to count things left to right in English-speaking countries, then there is a solution.  If the first house is interpreted to be on the right, there is no definite solution, but you can narrow it down to two possibilities.

Actually, if I remember how I solved it, there were a couple of other clues that eventually led you down the path to the correct location of the "first" house, in relationship to the other houses.

[CNYCacher]

Actually, if I remember how I solved it, there were a couple of other clues that eventually led you down the path to the correct location of the "first" house, in relationship to the other houses.

I don't think so, because left and right are abstract concepts and there is only one mention of directionality in the rules. "The Green house is next to, and on the left of the White house."

If we were to change that rule to say "The Green house is next to, and to the North of the White house." you can see how the directionality becomes useless unless we also were to change #9 thus "The Norwegian lives in the first northernmost house.

That's just how I see it.  If you got a proof showing that it can be solved without knowing to which direction the Green house is relative to the White house, I would love to see it.  I originally tried to solve the problem by recognizing that we don't know which end of the row the Norwegian lives on, and there was no logical way I could see to narrow it down past 2.

[AmbulanceDriver]

hrm..   i'll see if i still have my grid somewhere - may have tossed it.  and it may be that I'm misremembering that I made the assumption that "first" equaled "left"