History Main / FoxChickenGrainPuzzle

* Subverted in ''Beauty and the Geek''. The puzzle included a rowboat, a sack of grain and a toy chicken and fox. The solution was to take them all at once since toy animals don't eat each other.

* Ian Stewart's popular-mathematics book ''The Magical Maze'' opens with this, as an example of a maths problem most people are familiar with. To make it a bit more interesting he frames it as the [[AddedAlliterativeAppeal Panther-Pig-Porridge puzzle]].

* ''VideoGame/{{Runescape}}''

** [[https://xkcd.com/2348/ "Boat Puzzle"]] starts with the classic puzzle, but then more people show up with even more ridiculous requests (one person has two wolves and 100 cabbages, another has a goat that eats the wolf, etc).

** 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. While Homer is getting Maggie across the river, Santa's Little Helper just swims his way until Homer berates him for not paying attention to the puzzle.

* Parodied by animated short film [[https://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!]]

* In the Puzzle Planet from ''Skrulls vs. ComicBook/PowerPack'', the kids find a room with three alien critters with two who only want to eat one of the other critters and a pipe leading to another room that's only big enough to take one of the critters at a time. Katie figures out the back and forth method, opening the door to the next room after getting them all through the pipe .

---> '''Pepper''': A Turducken.\\

''' Budge''': That's not the answer.\\

* 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.]] [[JustForFun/TVTropesWillRuinYourLife Good luck!]]

---> 1. Take the goat across.
---> 2. Return alone.
---> 3. Take the cabbage across.
---> 4. Leave the wolf. [[FridgeLogic Why did you have a wolf?]]

* These types of games test [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Means%E2%80%93ends_analysis ''means-end analysis,'']] or the ability to set up sub-goals to reach an ultimate goal, even if those sub-goals appear contradictory to the ultimate goal. These type of logic games are useful in the world of artificial intelligence, where they're known as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_problem "toy problems"]] and are used to test methodologies and algorithms. A similar game, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missionaries_and_cannibals_problem "missionaries and cannibals,"]] has been used in the field of AI to demonstrate problem representation.

* ''Website/{{TED}}'' uses the four people bridge crossing variant for [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMFpOcLroOg&list=PLJicmE8fK0EiFRt1Hm5a_7SJFaikIFW30&index=26 this riddle video]].

* 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 (though a cat replaces the fox). The pigeons try to give him advice, which causes him to fail the first two times, but he eventually completes it without their help.

* 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!]]

--> '''Pepper''': A Turducken.\\

* One episode of ''WesternAnimation/ClassOf3000'' had Sunny put his class through this task as training for an upcoming concert. Tamika lampshades it:
-->'''Tamika:''' Everybody knows that riddle!\\

-->'''Philly Phil:''' What's a coyote gonna do with a hundred dollars?\\

** 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.

*** While Homer is getting Maggie across the river, Santa's Little Helper just swims his way until Homer berates him for not paying attention to the puzzle.

* In ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls2016'' episode "Splitsville", Bubbles has to help a farmer get his goose, fox and bag of seeds across the river. It starts out normal, then gets ridiculously complicated with the addition of nosy tourists, a [[DastardlyWhiplash Robber Baron]], the starting lineup of the Townsville girls basketball team, Literature/SherlockHolmes and the Raptor King.

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

* ''WebAnimaton/OverlySarcasticProductions'': Red references this puzzle in ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABuG8hZqynI Journey To the West: Part VII]]'': When Tripitaka and his party need to cross a river and a ferryman offers to take them across but in multiple trips (which turns out to be an attempt to kidnap Tripitaka), Sun Wukong adds, "We also need to bring this chicken, this fox and a bag of assorted grains."

* Ian Stewart's popular-mathematics book ''The Magical Maze'' opens with this, as an example of a maths problem most people are familiar with. To make it a bit more interesting he frames it as the [AddedAlliterativeAppeal Panther-Pig-Porridge puzzle]].

* In ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls2016'' episode "Splitsville", Bubbles has to help a farmer get his goose, fox and bag of seeds across the river. It starts out normal, then gets ridiculously complicated with the addition of nosy tourists, a [[DastardlyWhiplash Robber Baron]], the starting lineup of the Townsville girls basketball team, SherlockHolmes and the Raptor King.

* These types of games test ''means-end analysis,'' or the ability to set up sub-goals to reach an ultimate goal, even if those sub-goals appear contradictory to the ultimate goal. These type of logic games are useful in the world of artificial intelligence, where they're known as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_problem "toy problems"]] and are used to test methodologies and algorithms. A similar game, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missionaries_and_cannibals_problem "missionaries and cannibals,"]] has been used in the field of AI to demonstrate problem representation.

* These types of games test ''means-end analysis,'' or the ability to set up sub-goals to reach an ultimate goal, even if those sub-goals appear contradictory to the ultimate goal. They're sometimes known as "toy problems" and are used in the field of artificial intelligence to test methodologies and explore logical thinking; Saul Amarel used a similar logic puzzle, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missionaries_and_cannibals_problem "missionaries and cannibals"]] as an example of problem representation in his work with AI in the 1980's.

* In a subquest in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'', in order to make one of the cockatrice go back home, you must transport the cockatrice, a wolf and the boy across a river.

May also appear with different animals and vegetables, such as wolves, sheep and cabbages. (The version best known in the former Soviet Union, for example, has a wolf, a goat, and cabbage.) A "jealous husbands" (also known as cannibals and missionaries) 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 (or, cannibals cannot outnumber missionaries, lest the latter attacked and eaten). This one can be solved in eleven steps.

May also appear with different animals and vegetables, such as wolves, sheep and cabbages. A "jealous husbands" (also known as cannibals and missionaries) 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 (or, cannibals cannot outnumber missionaries, lest the latter attacked and eaten). This one can be solved in eleven steps.

* This was apparently the entire concept of an in-universe video game on ''Series/BetweenTheLions'' [[spoiler:with the fox replaced with a cat for no known reason]]. Not much replay value there...

* In the Puzzle Planet from ''Skrulls vs. ComicBook/PowerPack'', the kids find a room with three alien critters with two who only want to eat one of the other critters with a pipe leading to another room that's only big enough to take one of the critters at a time. Katie figures out the back and forth method, opening the door to the next room after getting them all through the pipe .

* ''Website/AdventOfCode'' includes a more complex version of the "jealous husbands" variant as 2016 day 11. There are ''four'' floors with various chips (the "wives") and generators (the "husbands") scattered across them. Any chip that ends up together with any generator while not also on the same floor as its matching generator gets destroyed, failing the puzzle. You can take either 1 or 2 items with you (not zero or more than two), and you can only move one floor at a time. You have to move all items up to the top floor. Part 2 [[UpToEleven adds two extra chip/generator pairs]].