Thanks to Hassan Issa from Lebanon, we can present you the following puzzle:

You have the chance to take your room in the "Masters Plaza", a hotel in which five masters (five of the most intelligent people who ever lived) are present. The hotel consists of five rooms and a small restaurant that contains five tables. Each master has a rank, which shows his level of thinking with respect to the whole group. The master with the first rank is said to be the head master, and he is not you. Rooms, as well as tables, are successively numbered from 1 to 5 in a way that each master lives in a room and eats on a table different in number from his rank. To avoid confrontation, masters with successive ranks are allowed neither to live in rooms next to each other nor to eat on tables next to each other. The four present masters are Albert Einstein, Galileo Galilei, Hassan Issa, and Archimedes. To have your room in the Plaza, you just must know your rank, table number and room number knowing that:

• Archimedes does not eat on the fifth table.
• Einstein is not the head master.
• Archimedes has exactly the middle rank between Hassan and you.
• Einstein is more intelligent than Archimedes is.
• Galileo eats on a table next to that of Einstein.
• Hassan does not eat on a table with the same number as his room number.

The question: What are the ranks, room numbers, and table numbers of the five masters?

The answer: Click here!

Copyright © 2005 by Hassan Issa, Lebanon. Published on this website with permission.