He has 8 times as many sweets as lollipops at first, but then he gives away 40 lollipops and ends up having 23 times as many sweets as lollipops.

Since the number of sweets must be a whole number, it must be divisible by both 8 and 23.

Let the number of units of sweets be 184 units (the product of 8 and 23).

Then he has 23 units of lollipops at first and 8 units of lollipops at the end. A total of 15 units of lollipops have been given away, and this corresponds to 40 lollipops.

15 units = 40
1 unit = 2 2/3

For the sweets,

184 units —> 490 2/3 sweets

For the lollipops,

23 units —> 61 1/3 lollipops

Total number of sweets and lollipops
= 490 2/3 + 61 1/3
= 552

Quite a weird question, since the number of sweets and the number of lollipops cannot be a fraction.

Try changing “40 sweets” to “30 sweets”. The question should be more doable now.

Thank you...I think that I might have gotten the workings wrong then ☹️