Logic Puzzles

It’s been a while since I did a post on a type of puzzle, so I thought I’d write about logic puzzles. Of course, all puzzles require a bit of logic, but the puzzles that I’m referring to here take a particular form. There’s a certain number of people (about 5) with a certain number of characteristics. We are then given a series of statements followed by a question. You know how this goes:

The clown with red hair is standing next to the one who smells like lemons. The clown with the polka-dot tie is not wearing yellow shoes. Which clown speaks German? (Not a real puzzle. Don’t try to solve it.)

In my sidebar I’ve provided links to a couple of sites that provide these kinds of puzzles. The Logic Zone has by far the best organized collection, with several puzzles classified as easy, medium, or hard. Judy’s Logic Problems is also quite nice. It’s got more of a feel of a personal homepage but there are some good puzzles there too. Finally, I thought I’d link to Mystery Master, a piece of software that can solve all logic problems. This link is included in case you get really frustrated.