A Christmas logic puzzle written by Mike Shenk for Games magazine, and a good candidate for a decision-table exercise: Santa’s 8 reindeer (4 bucks and 4 does) pull the sleigh in 4 rows of 2, arranged so that no row holds two bucks or two does. Each reindeer wears one of 8 distinctly colored ribbons — ocher, rose, cerise, chartreuse, maroon, magenta, white, and blue.
From the clues below, work out each reindeer’s row, side, and ribbon color:
- The buck directly behind Dasher wears the white ribbon.
- Blitzen, a doe, has the cerise ribbon to her right.
- The blue ribbon is nearer the sleigh than Dancer’s position, but nearer the front of the team than Prancer’s.
- The doe wearing chartreuse holds a front-of-team position, but isn’t on the same side as Cupid or Donner.
- Comet stands two positions ahead of the reindeer wearing rose.
- Three of the four deer on the right side are does.
- The cerise ribbon is worn two positions behind maroon; one of those two is beside the reindeer wearing ocher.
- Cupid is in front of a buck.
Present Santa’s plan as a decision table that determines each reindeer’s position and ribbon color, and send it in to DecisionManagementCommunity@gmail.com using any tool — or no tool at all.
Send your solutions to DecisionManagementCommunity@gmail.com, or open a pull request to add yours here.