How do I solve the 'Who Brought the Candy Corn' math problem and can someone give me the answers?

Answer 1

I'm assuming you're referring to the following problem:

"Five children dressed in different costumes arrived for a Halloween party riding bicycles. The brightly colored bikes stand in a row. Each child brought a different type of candy and their favorite drink to the party.

1. Emily rode the red bike,
2. Aaron brought M & M candies,
3. a bottle of Coke arrived on the green bike,
4. Brit drinks Pepsi,
5. the green bike is directly to the right of the white bike,
6. the witch brought Snickers,
7. of course Big Bird rode in on the yellow bike,
8. the person on the middle bike drinks apple cider,
9. Carla rode the first bike,
10. the person dressed as a clown parked next to the person who brought the peanut butter cups,
11. the person dressed as Count Dracula drinks tomato juice,
12. the Big Bird parked next to the person who brought jelly beans,
13. Daniel dressed like a cowboy, and
14. Carla parked next to the blue bike.

Who drinks Root Beer?
Who brought the candy corn?"

Problems of this sort are generally solved by deductive reasoning, which is a series of logical steps to conclude things that must be true or that cannot be true, based on what is already known.

The typical strategy would be to draw a bunch of grids. Each grid contains columns for each child (Daniel, Carla, Emily, Aaron, Brit) and rows for each variety of item. One grid would be for candy, and would have rows titled (M&Ms, Peanut Butter Cups, Jelly Beans, Snickers, Candy Corn). There would be similar grids for costume, bike color and drink.

You could start by putting a check mark in the box corresponding to Aaron and M&Ms. Now, by deductive reasoning, you know that Aaron did NOT bring any of the other types of candies, since it is stated that each child brought one type of candy. So you put an X in each box corresponding to Aaron and any other candy type. Likewise, you know that none of the other children brought M&Ms, so you put an X in each box corresponding to M&Ms and the other children.

You keep doing this with all the information until you have eliminated all possibilities but one.

Answer 2

If you tell us the problem, likely someone can tell you how to solve it. The name isn't enough to go on. :-)