Quite a difficult question.

The famous poem that begins "Twas the night before Christmas" (it's not called that - I can't remember its proper title, or who wrote it) has 8 reindeer. That's where the idea that Santa delivers presents on Cristmas Eve in a sled pulled by reindeer came from; and it's probably the most famous of all American poems. I hit that one at school when I was about 8, and learned all 8 names (which I've now forgotten, but remember there were 8)

Frank Baum's version, about three quarters of a century later, had Santa start with just 2 reindeer and acquire 8 more, so in that version there are 10 reindeer. I read that (borrowed it from local library) when I was temporarily hooked on Baum after seeing "The Wizard of Oz" at the cinema - but had to look it up to check now as I couldn't remember what the reindeers in it were called (so I couldn't count the names) or how many there were.

Then there was the Rudolph version, which originated a few decades after Baum's version, as a little story book made to be a Santa present in a department store chain, which had 9 reindeer. That of course had commercial clout, because it was owned by a fairly big retailer; and it acquired further commercial clout a decade later when Gene Autry sang a song written by a relative of the Rudolph story and roughly based on it, which rapidly hit the number 1 spot in America (it was pretty well known in the UK too - the Christmas when I was 5 years old I heard it many times) and was one of the highest selling titles ever in the USA - it only lost that distinction when Americans became sufficiently rich to buy many songs in that sort of quantity, which was not until about another 3 decades later on. I found it very odd that the singing cowboy should sing about a red nosed reindeer, but I guess that was just because I was young enough not to separate actors from roles. I remember that when Rudolph led the sleigh he was an extra added to the original 8, so that makes 9 altogether.

There are certainly other versons too - but I don't know anything about them. However, given that 8, 9 and 10 are all possible answers I suspect that 11 and 14 are too.

So the answer could be any of the numbers listed as options: 1000, 1001, 1110, 1011. And one has to work out on some basis which of these numbers should be chosen.

Historically the right answer seems to be 8; but as Frank Baum's books were extremely popular with American children (although perhaps his Santa story was less popular than the Oz books) maybe children would think of 10, but that wasn't one of teh options; and finally, as SQLServerCentral is culturally an American site, and American culture sometimes appears to be driven by the power of money, it might be a safe bet that choosing the one with the commercial clout will get the points.

So I picked 9. But I think people who answered 8 should get the points too.