Infer: verb formal 
         to obtain information indirectly. 

Pronunciation: 'in-f(&-)r&n(t)s, -f&rn(t)s
Function: noun
1 : the act or process of inferring: as a : the act of passing from one proposition, statement, or judgment considered as true to another whose truth is believed to follow from that of the former b : the act of passing from statistical sample data to generalizations (as of the value of population parameters) usually with calculated degrees of certainty
2 : something that is inferred; especially : a proposition arrived at by inference
3 : the premises and conclusion of a process of inferring 
 

As everyone knows, knowledge consists of both fact & fiction and a little in-between, although it can be very difficult sometimes to see any differences between them. Learning to become a reverser is, in part, learning to extract the facts from the -pluasable- fiction in order to arrive at the -correct- answer.. Easier said than done.. Perhaps the first place we can start is by verifing that what we read, is what's exactly written.
 

Please re-read the text shown in the title graphic!. What does it REALLY say?.

If it reads "A BIRD IN THE BUSH" then take another look and tell me why this is incorrect!. 

This is not an optical illusion or -trick- graphic, what is happening is that we can automatically and without being aware of,  compensate for double-words when we encounter groups of words that we already know or, recoqnise.  This is a silly party-trick but demonstrates quite well that we can -assume- things to be true when in reality, they arn't.  Subtle differences between facts are often the hardest to spot.

We can be given a number of items of -facts- from which we must add together in order to -find- the common connection(s) between them that, in turn, forms the third, forth or more -facts-.   It's here where the distictions between what is fact, and what is fiction can become cloudy for any number of reasons.

We may not understand the question asked of us.
The possible variations of answers is too large to comprehend without being given further -facts-.
The original fact(s) may themselves be inaccurate or wrong.
Perhaps, there is -no- true answer, but you won't know this until you've exhusted the possibilities.

Lets us examine the following statement..

There are 5 houses in 5 different colors in a row. In each house lives a person with a different nationality. The 5 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.

5 Houses.
5 -Unique- colours.
5 -Unique- nationalities of People.
5 -Unique- pets.
5 -Unique- brands of beverages.
5 -Unique- brands of cigars.

  1.The Brit lives in the red house. 
  2.The Swede keeps dogs as pets. 
  3.The Dane drinks tea. 
  4.The green house is on the left of the white house. 
  5.The green house's owner drinks coffee. 
  6.The owner who smokes Pall Mall rears birds. 
  7.The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill. 
  8.The owner living in the center house drinks milk. 
  9.The Norwegian lives in the first house. 
  10.The owner who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats. 
  11.The owner who keeps the horse lives next to the one who smokes Dunhill. 
  12.The owner who smokes Bluemasters drinks beer. 
  13.The German smokes Prince cigars. 
  14.The Norwegian lives next to the blue house. 
  15.The owner who smokes Blends lives next to the one who drinks water. 

Question:  Who owns the fish?

Lets begin to reverse this question.  If you check your 15 facts you will see that 'fish' is not mentioned as a pet, and yet, the question itself infers that someone owns them as a pet!. Since this is not a trick question we can safely add this fact to our other 15 facts.   That bit was easy, but where do we start searching for the answer to our question?.

Perhaps our first attempt will be to concentrate on finding out who owns what pets, since we already know that their are five pets and that they are: Dogs (fact 2), Birds (fact 6), Cats (fact 10) Horse (Fact 11) and Fish (From the question). 

However, any attempt to pursue this line of thought will quickly see that, in order to find the owner, we must yet again infer facts from not only who lives where, but what their brand of cigar is and,  in what colour house they live in and, what beverage they prefer to drink and also, in what order of house they live in. In other words, in order to be certain of our answer, we are going to have to extract every fact we can from this puzzle!.

In order to finish this challenge, email me with the -full- solution, listing -every- known fact you have gathered from the statement. If you've done this correctly then you will know who keeps fish as pets. All those who have completed this solution will be listed here on this page, believe, me, you will have more than deserved this!.
 

My Congratulations on completing this example goes to the following students:

EvilTeach                Completed:  2nd January 2000
Yardman                  Completed:  4th January 2000
Johannes_Kepler          Completed:  4th January 2000
Aule                     Completed:  7th January 2000
Anthony Bessinger        Completed:  7th January 2000
spyderbeast              Completed:  8th January 2000
hedgehog                 Completed:  8th January 2000
Pr0gMa5tEr@aol.com       Completed:  8th January 2000
vngae@ihug.co.nz         Completed:  9th January 2000
^heiko                   Completed:  9th January 2000
humphrey_p@yahoo.com     Completed: 12th January 2000
digitalghost@stny.rr.com Completed: 18th January 2000
John P                   Completed: 21st January 2000
LordMoose                Completed: 27th January 2000
TheWhiteRaven            Completed: 27th January 2000
Jeffery jps.de.b@tip.nl  Completed: 27th January 2000
G.Toad                   Completed: 30th January 2000

And finally... 

Feel free to send and share with me, your -thoughts- on how you were able to complete this exercise. Did -you- learn anything new from this experience?. Perhaps you have a -Zen- essay to share with me?