December 2020 newsletter competition: answer and winner

Congratulations to Rory O'Connor of Freemans Grattan Holdings for winning this month's competition!  A £50 Amazon voucher is on the way to him.

Here's the answer:

One view of the answer.

Here's another view of the same thing:

A clearer way to show who won what, and how.

I thought this month that I would explain how to arrive at the answer.  Here are the snippets of information:

The only information you are given.

Snippet 1 gives this:

An important implication of question 1 is that Bud isn't Dracula.

Snippet 2 says that the boy who raised the most money was dressed as an animal:

A few more crosses to fill in ...

Snippet 3 says that the owl won, but didn't raise most money:

Not only does this tell us that the owl won, but (by elimination) it tells us that the Gorilla won most money.

Snippet 4 says that Baz raised twice as much as the boy in last place, who wasn't the nurse:

Baz can only have won 200 or 1000 pounds, so the boy in last place must have won 100 or 500 pounds.

Snippet 5 says that Bill beat Ben by three places, although they both beat Bob:

This must mean that Bill won, Ben came fourth and Bob came fifth. Because the Owl came first, Bill must be the Owl.

The final snippet says that Dracula, the fridge and the nurse between them raised less money than Bud did on his own:

What this means is that these three boys raised 100, 200 and 500 pounds (although you don't know which raised which), and that Bud must have raised 900 or 1000 pounds. Most importantly, it means that the Owl raised either 900 or 1000 pounds. Entering this gives a satisfying cascade of ticks to reach the diagram shown above.

Going back over the snippets of information, the fourth one tells us that (since we know now that Baz won £200) the boy in last place won £100:

Nearly done ...

But snippet 1 tells us that Bud was beaten by Dracula.  Given Bud came 2nd or 3rd, Dracula must have come 2nd, giving us the final grid:

The final result.

Phew!