The lights in Malcolm's house are flickering, and he hopes that replacing all of his white lights with colored lights will make it stop. He buys 12 red lights, 3 times as many blue lights, and 6 green lights. If he still has 5 colored lights left to buy, how many white lights did Malcolm have initially? Let's think first. Chain of thought:
Malcolm has bought 12 * 3 = 36 blue lights. This means he has bought a total of 12 + 36 + 6 = 54 colored lights. If he still needs to buy more lights, then he must have initially had 54 + 5 = 59 white lights.
Therefore, the answer is 59.