Last week’s puzzle was a classic logic puzzle that has been around for years.  It may be easier to solve if you make a chart.  Here’s the thought process for the solution.

We have three cities, three businessmen and three train workers.  The assumption that needs to be made is that each businessman lives in a different city.

After you read through the list you immediately know that Smith is not the fireman based on clue 5.

Clue four tells us about the brakeman’s neighbor.  We know that Mr. Jones is not the Brakeman’s neighbor because of clue 3.  20,000 divided by 3 equals 6,666.666666… Since 1/3 of 20,000 is an irrational number we know that the brakeman can’t earn 1/3 of Mr. Jones salary.

We also know that Mr. Robinson is not the brakeman’s nearest neighbor since Mr. Robinson lives in Detroit (clue 1) and the brakeman doesn’t (clue 2).  The brakeman’s nearest neighbor is Mr. Smith, who must then live in the town between Chicago and Detroit.

For Clue 6, Mr. Smith doesn’t live in Chicago and Mr. Robinson lives in Detroit, thus Mr. Jones lives in Chicago.  So Jones is the Brakeman.

Since Smith can’t be the fireman (because he beat the fireman in billiards) and he can’t be the brakeman (because Jones is the brakeman), Smith must be the Engineer.