A certain patent attorney was astonished when he received the simultaneous allowance of five patents, for five separate clients, each of whom lived in a different city.

His astonishment turned to chagrin, however, when he learned what had happened to the patents. They had been received in his office on the same day, but because of an error made by a new clerk, they were sent out in wrong envelopes. Each client received a patent, but not his own.

The inventor of the steam shovel received the mousetrap patent, while the inventor of the latter found in his mail the papers that should have gone to Mr. Green. Mr. Blue received the patent for the rumble seat awning. Mr. Black's patent was sent to Chicago; the patent that should have gone was sent to Boston.

Mr. Brown had the patent intended for New York. Mr White had Mr. Brown's patent. The nonrefillable bottle patent was sent to Los Angeles; the inventor of the bottle received the patent of the Cleveland client, while in Cleveland the surprised client received a patent for an antisnore device.

Who should have received what where?

First solve the problems that are given. Next, make a list of the subproblems you considered while solving them. Discuss how a computer might be programmed to solve each of the given problems, and how each of the problems might be represented to the computer. If you find a state-space representation for a problem, estimate the size of the state space and try to identify heuristics and algorithms the machine could use to search it. If computer time is available to you, choose a problem and try to implement a computer program that can solve it.