It’s Wordle Wednesday which means I dole out a special logic puzzle, riddle or brain teaser to keep things spicy. And today’s is as spicy as they come. It’s said this riddle was created by Albert Einstein—hence the name. Rumor has it, Einstein believed only 2% of the world’s population could solve this tricky puzzle. I’ll give you the answer tomorrow. For now:
Einstein’s Riddle
There are 5 houses in five different colors. In each house lives a person with a different nationality. These five owners drink a certain type of beverage, smoke a certain brand of cigar, and keep a certain pet. No owners have the same pet, smoke the same brand of cigar, or drink the same beverage.
The clues:
- The Brit lives in the red house.
- The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
- The Dane drinks tea.
- The green house is on the left of the white house.
- The green house’s owner drinks coffee.
- The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
- The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
- The man living in the center house drinks milk.
- The Norwegian lives in the first house.
- The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
- The man who keeps the horse 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 Blends has a neighbor who drinks water.
The question is: Who owns the fish?
Okay, now on to today’s Wordle!
How To Solve Today’s Wordle
The Hint: Bob does this. Kids do it in Minecraft also.
The Clue: This Wordle ends with a consonant.
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The Answer:
Wordle Analysis
Every day I check Wordle Bot to see how I did. You can check your Wordles with Wordle Bot right here.
Another four-piece, and one that admittedly confounded me for a spell. I thought space would be a pretty good opening guess but I was left with a truly whopping 399 remaining possible solutions.
From here boink did work some magic, slashing that number to just 3. Unfortunately, the word build didn’t even cross my mind, so I went with blitz. Alas, such was not to be. Thankfully I finally came up with build for the win.
Competitive Wordle Score
Today was a tie so I get 0 for that and 0 for guessing in four. Again.
Today’s Wordle Etymology
The word ‘build’ comes from the Old English word “byldan,” which means “to construct a house” or “to fortify.” The Old English term is derived from the Proto-Germanic “*budljana,” which is believed to have meant “to dwell” or “to remain,” and by extension, “to build.” This Proto-Germanic word, in turn, comes from the Proto-Indo-European root “*bheue-,” which means “to be, exist, grow.”
The evolution of the word includes a shift in meaning over time, from the specific act of constructing a house to the more general act of creating or assembling something. This change reflects the broadening of the concept of building from mere physical construction to include the creation of more abstract forms, such as building a community or building up one’s strength.
The word ‘build’ has cognates in other Germanic languages, such as Old Norse “byggja” (to build), German “bauen” (to build, to cultivate), and Dutch “bouwen” (to build). These similarities across languages highlight the common roots and shared histories of the Germanic language family.
The etymology of ‘build’ thus reflects a journey from the concrete to the abstract, illustrating how language evolves with human innovation and societal development.
