Puzzle Party
You Want Candy
Each team has to divine a repeating pattern from a string of 100 random candy beads. They break off any candy that is not part of the pattern.
This was the first question that anyone turned in, by Jacob of Waiting for Orange Hat. He went for a pattern of length 1 (a white bead) that repeated itself 19 times (since that's how many white candies were on the necklace). It was the lowest score, however, with The Armadillos weighing in at a 19-candy pattern that repeated itself twice!
I remember very clearly thinking up this problem when wandering about a Toys'R'Us. I wrote it off as undoable, though, since I had no way of making sure that each team was starting with the same random string of candies. Then Liana pointed out to me that I could just make one random string, then rethread the others to match it.
Only one team didn't eat the leftover candy.