The Three Fruits Logic Riddle: Which Fruit Does Huda Have?

Huda has the fig. Sara's fruit has five letters, so Sara has the apple. Lina's fruit is not the fig, so Lina has the date, and the fig is left for Huda.

How do the two clues settle it?

Start with the clue that leaves only one choice. Apple has five letters, date has four and fig has three, so the first clue gives Sara the apple straight away.

That leaves the date and the fig for Lina and Huda. The second clue rules out the fig for Lina, so Lina has the date. Huda gets the only fruit that is left.

What are the usual wrong answers?

How do you solve matching riddles like this?

Draw a small grid with the people down the side and the fruits across the top. Cross out every pair a clue rules out, and tick a pair when it is the only one left in its row or column. Here, two clues are enough to fill the whole grid.

Puzzles like this can be solved with plain commonsense reasoning or with formal logic ^[1]. A 2020 paper calls a logic puzzle good when it has exactly one solution ^[1], and this riddle has just one. Much larger puzzles can be settled the same way: a well-known packing puzzle was settled by treating it as a constraint-satisfaction problem, where every rule cuts down the choices that remain ^[2].

Want another logic riddle?

Each riddle below can be solved by ruling options out, one clue at a time.