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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2628 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 29, 2024

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A puzzle, transformed from being about [redacted] to being about ice cream.

There is a famous gelateria in town, and the owners are rather insistent about only pairing specific toppings with specific ice cream flavors. Their 'old reliable' combination is whipped cream and chocolate chips paired with vanilla. You are aware of the combo, to the point of when somebody mentions choc chips and whipped cream you automatically think about vanilla ice cream.

You know that choc chips are also commonly paired with mint ice cream. They are also less commonly paired with caramel and strawberry flavors, although the latter only in some more specific combinations.

You know that whipped cream is sometimes paired with coffee flavor.

You are applying for an apprenticeship, and have to pass a test so that you won't break the flavor pairing rules. Among the questions, there is the following:

(Below, "flavor" refers to ice cream flavor, not the toppings)

We try to avoid making two-flavor combos where the dessert could be done as a single flavor in one of the two flavors. Given that, suppose you have a two-flavor dessert with chocolate chips and whipped cream (and no other toppings). What of the following flavor combinations would be the best choice for this dessert?

a. vanilla-mint

b. vanilla-caramel

c. coffee-vanilla

d. mint-caramel

e. caramel-coffee

I think that when presented outside the context of [redacted], the answer is obvious, but I want to make sure ;) I'll let you know what this is about in a day or two

This is a bit hard to parse, but I think the answer is e. caramel-coffee.

a, b, and c all have vanilla which could be a single flavor paired with chocolate chips and whipped cream. Between d and e, none of the single flavors there can be paired with both toppings, so they're basically equivalently acceptable. If we must rank them: they share caramel, which can be ignored since both contain it. Of the remaining flavors, mint vs. coffee, mint is common with one topping while coffee is "sometimes paired" with whipped cream, so coffee seems hardest to replicate as a single-flavor dish.

It would be helpful if the rules for pairings were delineated more clearly.

Given

only pairing specific toppings with specific ice cream flavors

And this

We try to avoid making two-flavor combos where the dessert could be done as a single flavor in one of the two flavors.

It looks like you're trying to say that if Flavor1 goes with Topping1, a two-flavor combo should not include a Flavor2 that also goes with Topping1, and also Flavor2 should not have Topping2 that could be paired with Flavor1. You have presented the following combinations as permissible:

  • Vanilla: ChocChip & WhipCream*
  • Mint: ChocChip
  • Caramel: ChocChip**
  • Strawberry: ChocChip**
  • Coffee: WhipCream

It's not clear whether "ChocChip & WhipCream" is considered a single topping, or two separate toppings, or a distinct topping from ChocChip or WhipCream alone. The precise details of Caramel and Strawberry are also vague: is it only Strawberry that only gets ChocChip topping in "more specific combinations," or also Caramel? The "only in some more specific combinations" also seems to strengthen the idea that one legitimate topping is "ChocChip & WhipCream" as distinct from either ChocChip or WhipCream alone, such that there does not appear to be any way to know for certain what constitutes a permissible topping combination for Strawberry (and, maybe Caramel).

My inclination is to agree with @PutAHelmetOn that Vanilla can be eliminated, since the two toppings you've mentioned both go on Vanilla, so adding a different flavor to vanilla doesn't add any topping possibilities--assuming the only two toppings are whipped cream and chocolate chips, which seems unlikely (and is never stated by you) but there's no further information given on the matter. This appears to hold true even if "ChocChip & WhipCream" is a distinct topping from either ChocChip or WhipCream alone, since presumably adding ChocChip to "ChochChip & WhipCream" won't count as adding a topping by adding a flavor.

Since Mint, Caramel, and Strawberry are all identified as ChocChip (with some asterisks), the obvious thing to do is combine one of them with Coffee, identified as WhipCream. Mint-Coffee would most easily and obviously fit the bill, but it's not on the list. Of the two non-vanilla options, Mint-Caramel and Caramel-Coffee, Caramel-Coffee seems to be the easiest fit, assuming Caramel is not part of the "latter" flavors intended to include ChocChip "only in some more specific combinations." If so, Mint-Caramel has the same presumptive problem as Vanilla: both flavors take ChocChip topping, even if some further combination requires it.

And all this depending somewhat on what the "more specific combinations" actually are, of course, but that information isn't provided, but... the way you've written the problem, Caramel-Coffee appears to be the only plausible answer. It's just that the whole rest of the problem seems to hint at the existence of further helpful information which you have for some reason neglected to provide, which anyone actually applying for an apprenticeship would certainly make it a point to know. For example, if Strawberry only gets ChocChip in combination with Banana topping, then Vanilla-Strawberry would work despite the ChocChip overlap--but this is also moot given the possible answers, since none of items A-E include Strawberry at all. But this reasoning also works for item B, Vanilla-Caramel, if Caramel is indeed among the "latter" flavors in that sentence and the combination in question includes some third unmentioned topping.

I think part of the problem is that the additional information might "give away" what this problem comes from. The block quote is a pretty straightforward adaptation of the original question, but the background information is comicsansstein's own summary of the relevant background information; participants were expected to bring their own understanding of the domain with them.

My read is: avoid a two-flavor pair if either flavor on its own would be good enough. This means the answer can't contain vanilla, since vanilla by itself is the tried and true.

The best answer would be something silly, like peanutbutter-pistaccio, but thats not an option.

If it doesn't contain vanilla, then between e and d the last problem is decide if mint or coffee will work best with the caramel.

The prompt only gives info about mint in the presence of chocolate chips (no info on whipped cream) and about coffee in the the presence of whipped cream (no info on chocolate chips)

At this point, I reread the prompt which says "what of" not "which of" so multi answers are allowed: e and d are tied.

If I had to tiebreak, I choose e because the word "sometimes" feels less frequent to me than "less commonly." But really the wording is ambiguous.

I must be missing something.

I believe that the scenario description needs to include something like "if no flavor of ice cream in a combination can accommodate a particular topping, then that topping is not an approved choice." Which I think would break your tie.

We try to avoid making two-flavor combos where the dessert could be done as a single flavor in one of the two flavors

I'm having a hard time understanding what that's supposed to mean

Perhaps rephrased-

"We try to avoid making two-flavor combos where all the toppings can already be paired with just one of the two flavors"

Goodness, it's been 6 years. I know there was a recent reddit thread on the topic; is that what has brought this to mind? I'm not sure you've done a great job of porting the question over, even if I agree that it was a pretty poor question.

EDIT: To clarify, I think the world of food design is too divorced from the constraints of the original problem, and people would be much more reasonable to use their intuitions about tasty things in this framing of the problem than their intuitions about the domain of the original problem.

Parentheses are rot13.

That thread did indeed prompt this question. I wondered if having no preconceived notions of what a (Freen Natry) is would make the people less likely to be stuck on an incorrect answer. I tried to give all the info a (Zntvp cynlre) would have, without tipping the hand too hard. I may have overcomplicated things.

What was the original context?

Look up "Great Designer Search 3 multiple choice".

The answer is obviously vanilla-caramel, because that's the only flavor which sounds like it would actually taste good.

Coffee-caramel ice cream can be pretty good, but frankly it makes more sense to put caramel sauce on coffee. I'm probably going to go to a different shop and get a sprite + sherbet freeze though.

So the right answer must contain vanilla, because it's the "normal" combo with those topings. We are also told choc chips are "commonly" paired with mint, whereas whipped cream is "sometimes" paired with coffee. I suppose "commonly" is meant to indicate a stronger affinity than "sometimes," so I guess the right answer is vanilla-mint? I'm not sure I'd say this answer is obvious, though, as I'm having a read a lot into your specific choice of words.

Also, this answer may not translate over to whatever [redacted] is, in particular if there's any kind of interaction term between the flavors. For example, if the toppings are meant to be symptoms a patient is exhibiting and flavors are meant to be drugs one might administer for those symptoms, I would imagine the answer might be different because you'd need to take into account drug interactions. Similarly if the toppings are economic indicators and the flavors are government policies, it's the same issue where two policies can interact in non-trivial ways.

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