History Main / FoxChickenGrainPuzzle

This is an ancient puzzle. The oldest known example was found in ''Propositiones ad Acuendos Juvenes'', which dates to the late ninth century.

* The first ''Midnight Mysteries'' uses the "jealous husbands" variant, involving two police officers, two sailors, two young boys, the player character, the boatman needed to transport the entire party across a river, and a boat that can carry a maximum number of three people, including the boatman. Aside from the boatman (not the player character, surprisingly) needing to be in the ferry at all times, the other rules are that the sailors must be under the watch of the officers, and the young boys must be accompanied by an adult at all times during the river crossing.

* This forms the basis of the primary plot of an episode of ''Series/BetweenTheLions'', where Lionel attempts to solve the puzzle, here depicted as a computer game. The pigeons try to give him advice, which causes him to fail the first two times, but he eventually completes it without their help.

* The puzzle appears in J.H. Brennan's (author of the Literature/GrailQuest books) ''Dracula's Castle'', where you have to travel with a cat, a dog, and a mouse in a lift. However the twist is that the cat can't bear to take the lift more than twice, meaning the correct answer is that there is no solution to the puzzle.

* [[http://ottercomics.taur.net/cramps/archive/index.php?puzzle=31 This webcomic]] throws a wrench into the classic riddle by allowing the wolf to eat the fruit in this case. [[spoiler: It also throws a second curve ball by replacing the chicken with a duck for this riddle, and it turns out that there's nothing that says you can't use the ''rope'' depicted in the boat to tow the duck behind the boat. The riddle is then solved in just three moves--take one item across, return, take the other item across, all while towing the duck with the rope, [[CaptainObvious since the duck can float]].]]

* The free children's MMO ''VideoGame/{{Poptropica}}'' has a puzzle involving this.

[[folder:Anime & Manga]]

* An UsefulNotes/AdobeFlash game has a more complex variant [[http://jayisgames.com/archives/2006/06/raft_iq_puzzle.php involving a raft, eight people and a convoluted set of rules]]. [[TVTropesWillRuinYourLife Good luck!]]

* Naturally, various versions of this puzzle pops up in the ''ProfessorLayton'' series.

* The obscure dating game ''Sprung'' on the UsefulNotes/NintendoDS had a variation to this on Brett's story. At one point Brett will be asked to go to Sanctuary with Becky, where he will bring his buds Lucas and Danny while she brings Alex and Erica. The catch, however, is that Becky wants a calmer night, so she doesn't want any funny business ([[FridgeLogic nevermind that Sanctuary is a raving night club where the nameless other people not mentioned in the game are probably doing just that]]). The puzzle comes where Brett meets everyone but Becky at the front of the club and he has to get all of them inside one by one. However, if Lucas and Alex or Danny and Erica are left alone and Brett comes back to them later, he will catch them making out, leading to Becky to see this, her announcing the night was ''ruined'' and you getting slapped with a game over. The puzzle is extended further because it's not only a matter of getting everyone inside, but also a matter of keeping everyone happy which means a lot of shuffling out people whom are already fine inside (such as dragging Danny out because he gets panicked over the sight of too many people, or dragging Lucas out for pep talk). Further rules are also added as time marches on, including how the aforementioned couples ''can'' later be left alone without problems after an event happens where Brett talks them down, or how new pairings are made that ''can't'' be left alone without you interfering with them (such as how, at one point, Danny and Lucas will fight if left alone).

* A variation of this appears near the end of the third ''BrokenSword'' game; a murderer, a witness to his crime, and the brother of the murder victim must all cross the river to reach the murder trial. The victim's brother is analogous to the fox, the murderer is analogous to the chicken, and the witness is analogous to the grain.

** Showed up in the 20th season episode "Gone Maggie Gone". Homer is trying to get across a river with Maggie[[note]]chicken[[/note]], Santa's Little Helper [[note]]fox[[/note]] (who is trying to tear up Maggie's doll), and a jar of candy-coated rat poison [[note]]grain[[/note]]. Then this trope is {{subverted}} when Homer brings Maggie first and she just crawls off, setting off the plot for the rest of the episode.

'''Zorak:''' You mean, Clarence Clemmons?\\

** Referenced in [[http://xkcd.com/589/ "Designated Drivers"]].

* Parodied by animated short film [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-ROdRgRRsY "Rubicon" by Gil Alkabetz.]]. As one viewer once commented: That wasn't a cabbage, that was a [[WhatDoYouMeanitwasntmadeondrugs peyote!]]

* The obscure dating game ''Sprung'' on the NintendoDS had a variation to this on Brett's story. At one point Brett will be asked to go to Sanctuary with Becky, where he will bring his buds Lucas and Danny while she brings Alex and Erica. The catch, however, is that Becky wants a calmer night, so she doesn't want any funny business ([[FridgeLogic nevermind that Sanctuary is a raving night club where the nameless other people not mentioned in the game are probably doing just that]]). The puzzle comes where Brett meets everyone but Becky at the front of the club and he has to get all of them inside one by one. However, if Lucas and Alex or Danny and Erica are left alone and Brett comes back to them later, he will catch them making out, leading to Becky to see this, her announcing the night was ''ruined'' and you getting slapped with a game over. The puzzle is extended further because it's not only a matter of getting everyone inside, but also a matter of keeping everyone happy which means a lot of shuffling out people whom are already fine inside (such as dragging Danny out because he gets panicked over the sight of too many people, or dragging Lucas out for pep talk). Further rules are also added as time marches on, including how the aforementioned couples ''can'' later be left alone without problems after an event happens where Brett talks them down, or how new pairings are made that ''can't'' be left alone without you interfering with them (such as how, at one point, Danny and Lucas will fight if left alone).

** And to top it off, [[spoiler:at the end the farmer [[ShaggyDogStory realizes that his farm was on the ''other'' side all along.]]

* In the ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' episode "The Prisoner of Benda", the characters have to figure out how to return everything to normal after rampant body-swapping, the main complication being that no two people can swap with each other more than once. The solution actually proves a mathematical theorem developed by the episode's writer Ken Keeler, which states that you only need two extra people to swap everyone to their original bodies. The theorem is explained [[http://theinfosphere.org/Futurama_theorem here]].

The Question: How can all four men cross the bridge within 17 minutes?\\
The Answer: [[spoiler:Men 1 and 2 cross, 1 (or 2) returns, 3 and 4 cross, 2 (or 1) returns, 1 and 2 cross.]]

May also appear with different animals and vegetables, such as wolves, sheep and cabbages. A "jealous husbands" variant has three couples trying to cross a river with a two-person rowboat, but none of the men will allow his wife to be alone with either of the other men on either side of the river. This one can be solved in eleven steps.

There's yet '''another''' variant called "Missionaries and Cannibals" where the poor missionaries get eaten if the number of cannibals are greater than theirs.

* The Creator/PiersAnthony novel ''[[Literature/IncarnationsOfImmortality With a Tangled Skein]]'' has this near the ending, with the Missionaries/cannibals variant. The complication is that there are three women and three demons, and if the demons outnumber the women at any point, [[{{Squick}} the women will be raped]].

** Showed up in the 20th season episode "Gone Maggie Gone". Homer is trying to get across a river with Maggie, Santa's Little Helper (who is trying to tear up Maggie's doll), and a jar of candy-coated rat poison. Then this trope is {{subverted}} when Homer brings Maggie first and she just crawls off, setting off the plot for the rest of the episode.

* In ''PuzzleClubhouse'', a [[http://puzzleclubhouse.com/displaycontent?id=220 decorative fountain referencing the fox-chicken-grain puzzle]] won the popular vote, becoming a permanent part of Puzzle Clubhouse's landscaping.