Trick or Treat or Math

I have a theory that most great academic work is undertaken in order to prove somebody else wrong. There's nothing quite like the rush that comes from getting to do an obnoxious "told you so" dance, and--if you're a nerd like me--that joy is easily multiplied tenfold when you get to footnote your gloating with sources and facts and snooty research. (Or, in this case, "research" with air quotes.)

It's not unlike a sugar rush, you might say. What an appropriate analogy, because we're talking about Halloween candy! You might think tonight is just a night for costumes and free candy (or, if you're an adult, costumes and booze), but for me, it was the scene of a grand experiment.

BACKGROUND
Like all great experiments, mine had its roots in a great debate. But first, I need to set the scene. My sister and I, being your typical millennials, both live at home still. The difference between living at home as a teenager and living at home as an adult, however, is that when Halloween rolls around, you are now in charge of buying the candy instead of just eating it with wild abandon.

But since communication is apparently not one of Tracey's and my strong points, we did not coordinate on the purchase of our Halloween candy. Which meant that we ended up with ten bags of various fun-sized chocolate bars, a fact that I did not discover until about a week before Halloween, when I mentioned to my father that I'd bought some candy.

"I think Tracey did, too," he said. "But what did you get?"

"100 Grands," I said. "3 Musketeers. Yorks."

"YORKS?!" my dad shouted. He was driving at the time, and I half-expected him to dramatically slam on the brakes in indignation and disbelief. "You bought Yorks? That's the worst candy ever!"

"I like Yorks!" I insisted. "Who doesn't love peppermint? I never used to get them in my treat bag as a kid--"

He snorted. I ignored him.

"--and I would have liked to, so I got them as a service to all the other neighborhood kids."

"I was listening to the radio the other day," he said, disregarding my impassioned defense of peppermint patties, "and they voted those the worst candies. What else did you get?"

"Butterfingers," I said, feeling confident in this choice, at least.

"You got all the terrible ones!" he cackled. "That was like the third worst on the list."

"I've never met someone who doesn't like Butterfingers!" I insisted. "I mean, maybe some of my friends don't really like them like them, but I've never met anyone who vehemently dislikes them."

"I hope Tracey picked better candies than you," was the only rejoinder I got.

The next day, I had the chance to ask Tracey which candies she'd bought. "Milky Ways, Kit-Kats, Snickers, 100 Grands, Crunch, and Butterfingers," she said. "Why, what did you get?"

"100 Grand, Butterfingers, 3 Musketeers, and Yorks," I said.

"YORKS?!" she hooted. "What are you, eighty-five years old?!"

"WHAT DID I TELL YOU?" my dad shouted, appearing out of nowhere to gloat.

"Do you hate children?" Tracey said. "Do you even want people to come to our house?"

It was then that I decided to take on what is undoubtedly the greatest, most relevant, and most important experiment of our time: I was going to prove that Yorks are a legitimate Halloween candy choice, dammit, or I was going to die trying.

THE (100) GRAND EXPERIMENT
I was the sole person in charge of distributing candy this year, given that everyone else conveniently had plans to be out of the house during prime trick-or-treating time. So I put my plan in motion.

I emptied all the available 100 Grands and Butterfingers into the candy basket without bothering to count them--since Tracey and I had both picked them, they weren't part of the argument. I decided to put in equal numbers of all the other candies and observe which, if any, were left at the end of the night. Due to the fact that Tracey had taken some of her candy to distribute among her coworkers, I had only 14 Snickers and 14 Kit-Kats left to work with, so I put 14 of each type of candy into the basket, mixed things up as well as I could, and waited for 6:00 to roll around.

The first hour or so went by pretty uneventfully. The kids were told they could each take one piece of candy, although I saw a couple sneak two. (Clearly scientific variables mean NOTHING to these children.) At 6:55--nearly the halfway point for the trick-or-treating window in our town--I took a tally of what remained (excluding, once again, the 100 Grands and the Butterfingers). Here's what was left:

Snickers = 11 (79% remaining)
Kit Kat = 3 (21% remaining)
Milky Way = 7 (50% remaining)
Crunch = 3 (21% remaining)
Tracey's candy = 43% remaining


Yorks = 7 (50% remaining)
3 Musketeers = 5 (36% remaining)
Renée's candy = 43% remaining

OH SNAP!

Although it's still anyone's game in terms of statistics, so far anecdotal evidence unfortunately appears to support the hypothesis that Yorks are "the worst candy ever," as I watched one little boy pick up a Yorks, realize what it was, debate putting it back, decide it would be rude, and put it into his bag with a palpable mixture of disappointment and vague resentment.

Things really got interesting around 7:15, when a group of around 30 kids traveling in what can only be described as a herd descended upon my doorstep. Two little girls argued over the last Yorks in the basket--score one for Yorks!--and, as a side note, about a quarter of the group went absolutely ga-ga over the Butterfingers, saying we were the first house to have them. Weird.

Needless to say, at 7:20 the breakdown of remaining candy was dramatically different.

Snickers = 1* (< 1 % remaining)
Kit Kat = 0 (0% remaining)
Milky Way = 4 (29% remaining)
Crunch = 1 (< 1% remaining)
Tracey's candy = 11% remaining
*There were actually 2 Snickers of the original 14 remaining, but the package was wide open so I removed it from the basket. I'm many things, but I'm not the sort of person to feed children suspicious candy bars.

Yorks = 0 (0% remaining)
3 Musketeers = 1 (< 1% remaining)
Renée's candy = < 1 % remaining

At this point, we were running low on candy, so I had to add a few bars. I was all out of Snickers and Kit-Kats, though, so I just added 2 candies each of Milky Way, Crunch, Yorks, and 3 Musketeers. (All future percentages for those candies will therefore be calculated using a total of 16 candies instead of 14, because that's how math works. I think. I was an English major and we're talking about Halloween candy; you should really just take all of this with a grain of salt.)

After the giant pack of York-loving children departed, the rest of the night was pretty quiet, although I did have this gem of a conversation with three of the last trick-or-treaters of the night, all of whom were probably under seven or eight years old:

Girl: Are there any more Kit-Kats?
Me: No, not anymore. We had some earlier, but they went really quickly.
Girl, with the air of a defense attorney cross-examining a witness: But there WERE Kit-Kats at one point?
Me: Yeah, but they're all gone now.
Boy #1: Did the big kids get 'em?
Me: I think so.
Boy #2, arriving on the scene: I like Kit-Kats, too.
Me: I know, they're good! But we don't have any more.
Boy #2: I think I've got a Kit-Kat in here somewhere.
He rummages through his candy bag, finds a Kit-Kat, and holds it up for inspection.
Boy #2: There it is!
Me, at a loss: Yep, that's a Kit-Kat...!
Awkward pause as Boy #2 combs extensively through all the remaining candy in the basket.
Boy #2: I don't really like any of this candy.
Me: No?
Boy #2: Yeah. I guess I'll just...
He picks up a 100 Grand, puts it back, ignores his friends calling him impatiently from across the yard, picks up a Butterfinger, hesitates, starts to put it back, then bags it with a "what the hell, why not?" sort of attitude.
Boy #2: Thank you!
Me: ...!

Kids, man. They're priceless.

By the end of the night, the numbers were as follows:

Snickers = 0*/14 (0% remaining)
Kit Kat = 0/14 (0% remaining)
Milky Way = 1/16 (< 1 % remaining)
Crunch = 0/16 (0% remaining)
Tracey's candy = 0.01667% remaining
*Still one Snickers technically left that's not counting toward the total. But let's be real, it probably would have gone anyway.

Yorks = 0/16 (0% remaining)
3 Musketeers = 1/16 (< 1% remaining)
Renée's candy = 0.03125% remaining

CONCLUSION
So Tracey beat me, but only barely. We both finished with less than one percent of our candy remaining, and the thing that kept me from winning, it really must be noted, was NOT a Yorks Peppermint Patty. I can only conclude that Yorks are not the worst candy ever, and my family really needs to have more faith in my candy-picking abilities.

Now...here's to a statistics-free November!

And that's how nerds do Halloween.

Eats Across Europe: Candy Edition, Part One

Candy--okay, chocolate--is a food group unto itself, I think you'll agree. I had no particular plans to research (read: eat my body weight in) candy bars when I started this trip, but one fateful afternoon at a Prague metro station changed everything. (EVERYTHING!) I was hungry and shaky and so jet lagged and out of it that I felt like I was standing on a ship at sea, rocking back and forth, when in reality I was standing on the very solid and stationary concrete floor of the Malostranska metro station. With blood sugar plummeting and stomach growling, I grabbed the first candy bar that looked palatable. I had no clue what it tasted like or what was in it, but I took one bite and I was in love.

Unfortunately I was still starving and out of it, but the Great Candy Love Affair had began. Since then I've been seizing every opportunity to sample new candy bars. It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make for the sake of giving you, all six-and-a-half (Miss Jessalyn "I only look at the pictures"*) of my blog readers, a complete guide to European candy bars for your future travels. You are so very welcome.

Most of these (with the sad exception of Delissa) can be found in more than one country, so I've just labeled each with the country where I first tried it.

(*Jessalyn, best friend, I love you! Please keep looking at all my pictures. Kay, thanks.)

Kinder Milk Bars (Germany)
Yummy but inferior to KinderSurprise, which is pretty much the same in terms of flavor but of course comes with the added advantage of containing a prize. Apparently the US Customs will confiscate KinderSurprises, though, since they're choking hazards. (Really? REALLY?!)

Anyway, Kinder Milk Bars are standard but delicious milk chocolate candy bars with a white filling that is ostensibly like milk (albeit milk saturated with sugar and whatnot). Market Basket people, I hope this sounds good to you because this is what you're getting from me. (Bought a 30-pack at the duty free store at the airport for like 5€...score!)

Ritter Sport - Yogurt Flavor (Germany)
It really tastes like yogurt!!! I don't mean in the way people usually mean regarding candy, when they say something like, "This Fruit Roll-Up tastes like strawberries," when what they mean is, "It tastes like sugary [but delicious] strawberry flavoring." I mean that Ritter Sport Yogurt Flavor really tastes like yogurt sandwiched between layers of milk chocolate. It's got that perfect, sour yogurty tang to it. Which is good, because I bought it for breakfast at the duty-free store after sleeping all night at the airport. It was between the yogurt flavor and the cornflakes one, both of which seemed appropriate to the situation. I got the yogurt one because it sounded weirder. I sort of wish I'd gotten both. Über breakfast!

Delissa (Czech Republic)
Oh Delissa bars. I can't even begin to express my love for you in prose, so I won't even try. Poem time!

Chocolaty, wafery, hazelnut sweet,
I can think of no better candy to eat.
When I was hungry you came to my rescue,
To which all I can say is, "Delissa bar, bless you!"
Light and delicious with crispity crunch,
It is true that I once ate Delissas for lunch.
The nutritional value may be debatable,
But a candy this tasty is simply unhateable!

Noteworthy: autocorrect has learned how to spell Delissa. Not only that but it will correct other words to Delissa. My work here is done.

Also noteworthy: they come in white chocolate as well, but the filling for those appears to be coconut instead of hazelnut. Still good, but not quite as good as the original.

Knoppers (Germany)
Like layers of Vienna wafers but crunchier, alternated with a layer of chocolate hazelnut and a layer of milk cream. The bottom wafer is chocolate coated. Overall, Knoppers are all right but lack the poetry-inducing magic of Delissas.

Lion (France)
Made by Nestle, so my first thought was: why they don't distribute them in the US?! Upon reflection I realized it's probably because we already have them, we just call them 100 Grands. Lion bars are basically the same thing--chocolate outer coating, then a layer of crispy bits, then some weird but delicious caramel-nougat-hybrid sludge in the middle. I got a three-pack and ate one at breakfast time, one at lunch, and then one at senior citizen dinner time (4 pm on my stalled train). Lion: a candy bar for all meals!

Ritter Sport - Marzipan Flavor
About a month or two ago I bought some almond paste at Market Basket so I could make cookies. I had about 2 ounces left over, and those 2 ounces have been sitting in my fridge ever since, undisturbed except for when I'm craving something sweet but am trying to resist the urge to eat junk food. In these kinds of situations, I will slice myself off a piece of almond paste and happily snack away. Sometimes if I'm craving some chocolate I'll spread Nutella on top of it.

The Ritter Sport Marzipan bar tastes pretty much like almond paste with Nutella, except about a million times better.

Balisto (France)
Chocolate-coated honey almond wafers. I was hoping for a sort of wafery, crunchy Toblerone sort of situation, but no such luck. Had the consistency of chocolate covered graham crackers and was just sort of meh. (Full disclosure, though: this is the opinion of someone who doesn't particularly like chocolate-covered graham crackers. If you happen to be a fan of them, then I guess Balistos could well turn out to be your Delissas. Just something to think about.)

Daim (France)
Sort of like Skor or a Heath Bar: a thin wafer of toffee coated in chocolate. Simple but top notch. Would eat again. DID eat again, in fact, and was eating it with so much gusto that a stranger wished me bon appetit. Thanks, random train station lady who "only needed three more Euros for a ticket to Marseille"! I appreciate it!

And that's it for now! Fear not, I'll continue my candy crusade and be back to update you on the merits of some more foreign candy bars in the not-too-distant future.