You need to put your reindeer, Gloopin, Balthazar, Bloopin, Prancer, and Quentin, in a single-file line to

pull your sleigh. However, Prancer and Balthazar are best friends, so you have to put them next to each
other, or they won't fly.

How many ways can you arrange your reindeer?

1/6
Hint #1

Forget about the reindeer that have to be together for a second, and let's try to figure out how many
ways we can arrange the reindeer if we don't have to worry about that.

We can build our line of reindeer one by one: there are 555 slots, and we have 555 different reindeer we
can put in the first slot.
2/6
Hint #2

Once we fill the first slot, we only have 444 reindeer left, so we only have 444 choices for the second
slot. So far, there are 5 \cdot 4 = 205⋅4=205, dot, 4, equals, 20 unique choices we can make.
3/6
Hint #3

We can continue in this way for the third reindeer, then the fourth, and so on, until we reach the last slot,
where we only have one reindeer left and so we can only make one choice.
4/6
Hint #4

So, the total number of unique choices we could make to get to an arrangement of reindeer
is 5\cdot4\cdot3\cdot2\cdot1 = 120.5⋅4⋅3⋅2⋅1=120.5, dot, 4, dot, 3, dot, 2, dot, 1, equals, 120,
point Another way of writing this is 5! or 5 factorial. But we haven't thought about the two reindeer
who have to be together yet.
5/6
Hint #5

We can count the number of arrangements where Prancer and Balthazar are together by treating them
as one double-reindeer. Now we can use the same idea as before to come up with 4\cdot3\cdot2\cdot1
= 244⋅3⋅2⋅1=244, dot, 3, dot, 2, dot, 1, equals, 24 different arrangements. But that's not quite right.
6/6
Hint #6

Why? Because you can arrange the double-reindeer with Prancer in front or with Balthazar in
front, and those are different arrangements! So the actual number of arrangements with Prancer
and Balthazar together is 24 * 2 =48