Zebra Puzzle
well-known logic puzzle
The Zebra Puzzle is a well-known logic puzzle. Many versions of the puzzle exist, including a version published in Life International magazine on December 17, 1962. The March 25, 1963, issue of Life contained the solution and the names of several hundred successful solvers from around the world.
The puzzle is often called Einstein's Puzzle or Einstein's Riddle because, according to an urban legend, it was invented by Albert Einstein as a boy; it is also sometimes attributed to Lewis Carroll. However, there is no evidence for either person's authorship, and the Life International version of the puzzle mentions brands of cigarettes that did not exist during Carroll's lifetime or Einstein's boyhood.
The Zebra puzzle has been used as a benchmark in the evaluation of computer algorithms for solving constraint satisfaction problems. More recently, it has been used as a benchmark for logical reasoning capabilities of large language models.
Description
The following version of the puzzle appeared in Life International in 1962:
There are five houses.
The Englishman lives in the red house.
The Spaniard owns the dog.
The public source identifies “Zebra Puzzle” as well-known logic puzzle. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Zebra, Puzzle and well-known.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q169497. The first chronological checks are 1962 and 1963.
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This entry incorporates text from “Zebra Puzzle” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.