Logic Puzzles

I enjoy doing logic puzzles - you know, the ones where they give you a list of clues and you get to fill in the charts to come up with the answers. I've been solving a lot of them lately, and a couple days ago I wondered how difficult are these to make up?

So, I made a couple. They aren't terribly hard to come up with. Essentially I started with the answers, then wrote a couple clues, then solved the puzzle as far as I possibly could using those clues, then added others to fill in the gaps solving it as I went, until I had enough clues to solve it completely.  I thought I'd share them with you. (Note these are entirely fictional. While the names may correspond to the names of my children, the details in the puzzles were made up for the sake of the puzzle and have no bearing on real life.)

Problem 1.

One Saturday morning, the four Hiatt children woke up at a different time, ate a different cereal for breakfast, and wore a different colored sweater. Can you figure out what time each child got up, what cereal they ate and what color sweater they wore? (Names are Hannah, John, Joshua and Peter; times they got up were 7:00, 7:15, 7:30, and 7:45. Cereals were Cocoa Puffs, Honey Comb, Lucky Charms and Fruit Loops, and sweater colors were red, blue, purple and brown.)

1. Peter woke up 15 minutes after the person who wore the blue sweater.
2. The person who ate cocoa puffs for breakfast got up 15 minutes before the person who wore the purple sweater.
3. Hannah did not eat Lucky Charms.
4. The person who wore the brown sweater got up 30 minutes after Hannah.
5. John is either the person who ate Cocoa Puffs or the person who wore the purple sweater.
6. The person who woke up at 7:15 wore the red sweater.
7. John woke up before the person who ate the Fruit Loops.

Problem 2.

The four siblings moved out of the house the same year with dreams of pursuing a different career. Each moved to a different state, then ended up doing something different than they had planned. Can you figure out in which month each moved out, what they had wanted to do, and what they ended up doing? (The occupations they had wanted included an author, an inventor, a programmer and a zoo keeper. The Occupations they ended up with were artist, musician, pilot and professor. The states they moved to were Alaska, California, Nevada and New York, and the months they moved out in were June, July, August, and September.)

1. The person who had wanted to become an inventor, who is not Joshua, did not move to California.
2. Peter moved out before the person who moved to California.
3. The artist moved out in August.
4. The person who moved to Alaska moved out after the person who wanted to become an author, who is not Peter.
5. Peter is not the professor.
6. The person who wanted to become a programmer, who is not John, moved to Nevada.
7. The four people are the artist, the person who wanted to become an inventor as a child, the person who moved to New York, and the person who left home in July.
8. The person who wanted to become a programmer moved out after the person who became a musician.
9. Hannah moved out after the person who moved to Nevada but before the person who became a pilot. 

Click here to open and print a pdf file with a table to fill out here.