To each vertex of a regular pentagon an integer is assigned, so that the sum of all five numbers is positive. If three consecutive vertices are assigned the numbers $x,y,z$ respectively, and $y<0$, then the following operation is allowed: $x,y,z$ are replaced by $x+y,-y,z+y$ respectively. Such an operation is performed repeatedly as long as at least one of the five numbers is negative. Determine whether this procedure necessarily comes to an end after a finite number of steps.

A magician intends to perform the following trick. She announces a positive integer $n$, along with $2n$ real numbers $x_1 < \dots < x_{2n}$, to the audience. A member of the audience then secretly chooses a polynomial $P(x)$ of degree $n$ with real coefficients, computes the $2n$ values $P(x_1), \dots , P(x_{2n})$, and writes down these $2n$ values on the blackboard in non-decreasing order. After that the magician announces the secret polynomial to the audience. Can the magician find a strategy to perform such a trick?

Prove there exists a constant $c$ (independent of $n$) such that for any graph $G$ with $n>2$ vertices, we can split $G$ into a forest and at most $cf(n)$ disjoint cycles, where a) $f(n)=n\ln{n}$; b) $f(n)=n$. [i]David Yang.[/i]

Let $n$ be an positive integer. Find the smallest integer $k$ with the following property; Given any real numbers $a_1 , \cdots , a_d $ such that $a_1 + a_2 + \cdots + a_d = n$ and $0 \le a_i \le 1$ for $i=1,2,\cdots ,d$, it is possible to partition these numbers into $k$ groups (some of which may be empty) such that the sum of the numbers in each group is at most $1$.

Consider the following graph algorithm (where $V$ is the set of vertices and $E$ the set of edges in $G$). $\textbf{procedure }\textsc{s}(G)$ $\qquad \textbf{if } |V| = 0\textbf{ then return true}$ $\qquad \textbf{for }(u,v)\textbf{ in }E\textbf{ do}$ $\qquad\qquad H\gets G-u-v$ $\qquad\qquad\textbf{if } \textsc{s}(H)\textbf{ then return true}$ $\qquad\textbf{return false}$ Here $G - u - v$ means the subgraph of $G$ which does not contain vertices $u,v$ and all edges using them. How many graphs $G$ with vertex set $\{1,2,3,4,5,6\}$ and [i]exactly[/i] $6$ edges satisfy $s(G)$ being true?

A year is a leap year if and only if the year number is divisible by $400$ (such as $2000$) or is divisible by $4$ but not by $100$ (such as $2012$). The $200\text{th}$ anniversary of the birth of novelist Charles Dickens was celebrated on February $7$, $2012$, a Tuesday. On what day of the week was Dickens born? $ \textbf{(A)}\ \text{Friday} \qquad\textbf{(B)}\ \text{Saturday} \qquad\textbf{(C)}\ \text{Sunday} \qquad\textbf{(D)}\ \text{Monday} \qquad\textbf{(E)}\ \text{Tuesday} $

The polynomial $P(x)$ is cubic. What is the largest value of $k$ for which the polynomials $Q_{1}(x) = x^{2}+(k-29)x-k$ and $Q_{2}(x) = 2x^{2}+(2k-43)x+k$ are both factors of $P(x)$?

Let $A$ be a $101$-element subset of the set $S=\{1,2,\ldots,1000000\}$. Prove that there exist numbers $t_1$, $t_2, \ldots, t_{100}$ in $S$ such that the sets \[ A_j=\{x+t_j\mid x\in A\},\qquad j=1,2,\ldots,100 \] are pairwise disjoint.

Each positive integer $a$ undergoes the following procedure in order to obtain the number $d = d\left(a\right)$: (i) move the last digit of $a$ to the first position to obtain the numb er $b$; (ii) square $b$ to obtain the number $c$; (iii) move the first digit of $c$ to the end to obtain the number $d$. (All the numbers in the problem are considered to be represented in base $10$.) For example, for $a=2003$, we get $b=3200$, $c=10240000$, and $d = 02400001 = 2400001 = d(2003)$.) Find all numbers $a$ for which $d\left( a\right) =a^2$. [i]Proposed by Zoran Sunic, USA[/i]

Let $S$ be the set of $10$-tuples of non-negative integers that have sum $2019$. For any tuple in $S$, if one of the numbers in the tuple is $\geq 9$, then we can subtract $9$ from it, and add $1$ to the remaining numbers in the tuple. Call thus one operation. If for $A,B\in S$ we can get from $A$ to $B$ in finitely many operations, then denote $A\rightarrow B$. (1) Find the smallest integer $k$, such that if the minimum number in $A,B\in S$ respectively are both $\geq k$, then $A\rightarrow B$ implies $B\rightarrow A$. (2) For the $k$ obtained in (1), how many tuples can we pick from $S$, such that any two of these tuples $A,B$ that are distinct, $A\not\rightarrow B$.

Let $n$ be a fixed positive integer. How many ways are there to write $n$ as a sum of positive integers, \[n = a_1 + a_2 + \cdots a_k\] with $k$ an arbitrary positive integer and $a_1 \le a_2 \le \cdots \le a_k \le a_1 + 1$? For example, with $n = 4$, there are four ways: $4$, $2 + 2$, $1 + 1 + 2$, $1 + 1 + 1 + 1$.

There are 2002 towns in a kingdom. Some of the towns are connected by roads in such a manner that, if all roads from one city closed, one can still travel between any two cities. Every year, the kingdom chooses a non-self-intersecting cycle of roads, founds a new town, connects it by roads with each city from the chosen cycle, and closes all the roads from the original cycle. After several years, no non-self-intersecting cycles remained. Prove that at that moment there are at least 2002 towns, exactly one road going out from each of them.

At a math contest there are $2n$ students participating. Each of them submits a problem to the jury, which thereafter gives each students one of the $2n$ problems submitted. One says that the contest is [i]fair[/i] is there are $n$ participants which receive their problems from the other $n$ participants. Prove that the number of distributions of the problems in order to obtain a fair contest is a perfect square.

The $100$ vertices of a prism, whose base is a $50$-gon, are labeled with numbers $1, 2, 3, \ldots, 100$ in any order. Prove that there are two vertices, which are connected by an edge of the prism, with labels differing by not more than $48$. Note: In all the triangles the three vertices do not lie on a straight line.

The numbers $ 1, 2,\ldots, 50 $ are written on a blackboard. Each minute any two numbers are erased and their positive difference is written instead. At the end one number remains. Which values can take this number?

There are 2000 cities in a country and no roads. Prove that some cities can be connected by a road such that there would be 2 cities with 1 road passing through them, there would be 2 cities with 2 roads passim through them,...,there would be 2 cities with 1000 roads passing through them. [I]Proposed by F. Bakharev[/i]

Let $\mathbb{Q^+}$ denote the set of positive rational numbers. Determine all functions $f: \mathbb{Q^+} \to \mathbb{Q^+}$ that satisfy the conditions \[ f \left( \frac{x}{x+1}\right) = \frac{f(x)}{x+1} \qquad \text{and} \qquad f \left(\frac{1}{x}\right)=\frac{f(x)}{x^3}\] for all $x \in \mathbb{Q^+}.$

There is a standard deck of $52$ cards without jokers. The deck consists of four suits(diamond, club, heart, spade) which include thirteen cards in each. For each suit, all thirteen cards are ranked from “$2$” to “$A$” (i.e. $2, 3,\ldots , Q, K, A$). A pair of cards is called a “[i]straight flush[/i]” if these two cards belong to the same suit and their ranks are adjacent. Additionally, "$A$" and "$2$" are considered to be adjacent (i.e. "A" is also considered as "$1$"). For example, spade $A$ and spade $2$ form a “[i]straight flush[/i]”; diamond $10$ and diamond $Q$ are not a “[i]straight flush[/i]” pair. Determine how many ways of picking thirteen cards out of the deck such that all ranks are included but no “[i]straight flush[/i]” exists in them.

Starting from a positive integer $n$, we can replace the current number with a multiple of the current number or by deleting one or more zeroes from the decimal representation of the current number. Prove that for all values of $n$, it is possible to obtain a single-digit number by applying the above algorithm a finite number of times. There is a nice solution to this...

Archimedes planned to count all of the prime numbers between $2$ and $1000$ using the Sieve of Eratosthenes as follows: (a) List the integers from $2$ to $1000$. (b) Circle the smallest number in the list and call this $p$. (c) Cross out all multiples of $p$ in the list except for $p$ itself. (d) Let $p$ be the smallest number remaining that is neither circled nor crossed out. Circle $p$. (e) Repeat steps $(c)$ and $(d)$ until each number is either circled or crossed out. At the end of this process, the circled numbers are prime and the crossed out numbers are composite. Unfortunately, while crossing out the multiples of $2$, Archimedes accidentally crossed out two odd primes in addition to crossing out all the even numbers (besides $2$). Otherwise, he executed the algorithm correctly. If the number of circled numbers remaining when Archimedes finished equals the number of primes from $2$ to $1000$ (including $2$), then what is the largest possible prime that Archimedes accidentally crossed out?

For any integer $d > 0,$ let $f(d)$ be the smallest possible integer that has exactly $d$ positive divisors (so for example we have $f(1)=1, f(5)=16,$ and $f(6)=12$). Prove that for every integer $k \geq 0$ the number $f\left(2^k\right)$ divides $f\left(2^{k+1}\right).$ [i]Proposed by Suhaimi Ramly, Malaysia[/i]

We are given five equal-looking weights of pairwise distinct masses. For any three weights $A$, $B$, $C$, we can check by a measuring if $m(A) < m(B) < m(C)$, where $m(X)$ denotes the mass of a weight $X$ (the answer is [i]yes[/i] or [i]no[/i].) Can we always arrange the masses of the weights in the increasing order with at most nine measurings?

A finite set $S$ of unit squares is chosen out of a large grid of unit squares. The squares of $S$ are tiled with isosceles right triangles of hypotenuse $2$ so that the triangles do not overlap each other, do not extend past $S$, and all of $S$ is fully covered by the triangles. Additionally, the hypotenuse of each triangle lies along a grid line, and the vertices of the triangles lie at the corners of the squares. Show that the number of triangles must be a multiple of $4$.

In a simple graph $G$, we call $t$ pairwise adjacent vertices a $t$[i]-clique[/i]. If a vertex is connected with all other vertices in the graph, we call it a [i]central[/i] vertex. Given are two integers $n,k$ such that $\dfrac {3}{2} \leq \dfrac{1}{2} n < k < n$. Let $G$ be a graph on $n$ vertices such that [b](1)[/b] $G$ does not contain a $(k+1)$-[i]clique[/i]; [b](2)[/b] if we add an arbitrary edge to $G$, that creates a $(k+1)$-[i]clique[/i]. Find the least possible number of [i]central[/i] vertices in $G$.

A multi-digit number is written on the blackboard. Susan puts in a number of plus signs between some pairs of adjacent digits. The addition is performed and the process is repeated with the sum. Prove that regardless of what number was initially on the blackboard, Susan can always obtain a single-digit number in at most ten steps.