A magician and his assistent are performing the following trick.There is a row of 12 empty closed boxes. The magician leaves the room, and a person from the audience hides a coin in each of two boxes of his choice, so that the assistent knows which boxes contain coins. The magician returns, and the assistant is allowed to open one box that does not contain a coin. Next, the magician selects 4 boxes, which are simultaneously opened. The goal of the magician is to open both boxes that contain coins. Devise a method that will allow the magician and his assistant to always succesfully perform the trick.

a)Does there exist for any rational number $\frac{a}{b}$ some rational numbers $x_1,x_2,....x_n$ such that $x_1*x_2*....*x_n=1$ and $x_1+x_2+....+x_n=\frac{a}{b}$ a)Does there exist for any rational number $\frac{a}{b}$ some rational numbers $x_1,x_2,....x_n$ such that $x_1*x_2*....*x_n=\frac{a}{b}$ and $x_1+x_2+....+x_n=1$

Prove that any positive integer can be represented as an aggregate of different powers of $3$, the terms in the aggregate being combined by the signs $+$ and $-$ appropriately chosen.

Determine all positive integers $n$ such that $5^n - 1$ can be written as a product of an even number of consecutive integers.

The Y2K Game is played on a $1 \times 2000$ grid as follows. Two players in turn write either an S or an O in an empty square. The first player who produces three consecutive boxes that spell SOS wins. If all boxes are filled without producing SOS then the game is a draw. Prove that the second player has a winning strategy.

There are a board with $2n \cdot 2n \ (= 4n^2)$ squares and $4n^2-1$ cards numbered with different natural numbers. These cards are put one by one on each of the squares. One square is empty. We can move a card to an empty square from one of the adjacent squares (two squares are adjacent if they have a common edge). Is it possible to exchange two cards on two adjacent squares of a column (or a row) in a finite number of movements?

Let $m,n$ be positive integer numbers. Prove that there exist infinite many couples of positive integer nubmers $(a,b)$ such that \[a+b| am^a+bn^b , \quad\gcd(a,b)=1.\]

A building has some rooms and there is one or more than one doors between the rooms. We know that we can go from each room to another one. Two rooms $E,S$ has been labeled, and the room $S$ has exactly one door. Someone is in the room $S$ and wants to move to the room $E$. [list][list][list][list][list][list][img]http://s1.picofile.com/file/6475095570/image005.jpg[/img][/list][/list][/list][/list][/list][/list] A "[i]way[/i]" $P$ for moving between the rooms is an infinite sequence of $L$ and $R$. We say that someone moves according to the "[i]way[/i]" $P$, if he start moving from the room $S$, and after passing the $n$'th door, if $P_n$ is $R$, then he goes to the first door which is in the right side, and if $P_n$ is $L$, then he goes to the first door which is in the left side (obviously, if some room has exactly one door, then there is no difference between $L$ and $R$), and when he arrives to the room $E$, he stops moving. Prove that there exists a "[i]way[/i]" such that if the person move according to it, then he can arrive to the room $E$ of any building.

From an unlimited supply of 1-cent coins, 10-cent coins, and 25-cent coins, Silas wants to find a collection of coins that has a total value of $N$ cents, where $N$ is a positive integer. He uses the so-called greedy algorithm, successively choosing the coin of greatest value that does not cause the value of his collection to exceed $N.$ For example, to get 42 cents, Silas will choose a 25-cent coin, then a 10-cent coin, then 7 1-cent coins. However, this collection of 9 coins uses more coins than necessary to get a total of 42 cents; indeed, choosing 4 10-cent coins and 2 1-cent coins achieves the same total value with only 6 coins. In general, the greedy algorithm succeeds for a given $N$ if no other collection of 1-cent, 10-cent, and 25-cent coins gives a total value of $N$ cents using strictly fewer coins than the collection given by the greedy algorithm. Find the number of values of $N$ between $1$ and $1000$ inclusive for which the greedy algorithm succeeds.

An integer $N \ge 2$ is given. A collection of $N(N + 1)$ soccer players, no two of whom are of the same height, stand in a row. Sir Alex wants to remove $N(N - 1)$ players from this row leaving a new row of $2N$ players in which the following $N$ conditions hold: ($1$) no one stands between the two tallest players, ($2$) no one stands between the third and fourth tallest players, $\;\;\vdots$ ($N$) no one stands between the two shortest players. Show that this is always possible. [i]Proposed by Grigory Chelnokov, Russia[/i]

Let $m$ be a positive integer, and consider a $m\times m$ checkerboard consisting of unit squares. At the centre of some of these unit squares there is an ant. At time $0$, each ant starts moving with speed $1$ parallel to some edge of the checkerboard. When two ants moving in the opposite directions meet, they both turn $90^{\circ}$ clockwise and continue moving with speed $1$. When more than $2$ ants meet, or when two ants moving in perpendicular directions meet, the ants continue moving in the same direction as before they met. When an ant reaches one of the edges of the checkerboard, it falls off and will not re-appear. Considering all possible starting positions, determine the latest possible moment at which the last ant falls off the checkerboard, or prove that such a moment does not necessarily exist. [i]Proposed by Toomas Krips, Estonia[/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, $A\not\rightarrow B$.

There are $ 63$ points arbitrarily on the circle $ \mathcal{C}$ with its diameter being $ 20$. Let $ S$ denote the number of triangles whose vertices are three of the $ 63$ points and the length of its sides is no less than $ 9$. Fine the maximum of $ S$.

Let $n$ be a positive integer. Given $n^2$ points in a unit square, prove that there exists a broken line of length $2n + 1$ that passes through all the points. [i]Allen Yuan[/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 $x \in \mathbb{Q^+}.$

For a sequence $x_1,x_2,\ldots,x_n$ of real numbers, we define its $\textit{price}$ as \[\max_{1\le i\le n}|x_1+\cdots +x_i|.\] Given $n$ real numbers, Dave and George want to arrange them into a sequence with a low price. Diligent Dave checks all possible ways and finds the minimum possible price $D$. Greedy George, on the other hand, chooses $x_1$ such that $|x_1 |$ is as small as possible; among the remaining numbers, he chooses $x_2$ such that $|x_1 + x_2 |$ is as small as possible, and so on. Thus, in the $i$-th step he chooses $x_i$ among the remaining numbers so as to minimise the value of $|x_1 + x_2 + \cdots x_i |$. In each step, if several numbers provide the same value, George chooses one at random. Finally he gets a sequence with price $G$. Find the least possible constant $c$ such that for every positive integer $n$, for every collection of $n$ real numbers, and for every possible sequence that George might obtain, the resulting values satisfy the inequality $G\le cD$. [i]Proposed by Georgia[/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 $1$.

Two distinct positive integers $a,b$ are written on the board. The smaller of them is erased and replaced with the number $\frac{ab}{|a-b|}$. This process is repeated as long as the two numbers are not equal. Prove that eventually the two numbers on the board will be equal.

Solve in positive integers the equation $10^{a}+2^{b}-3^{c}=1997$.

A league consists of $2024$ players. A [i]round[/i] involves splitting the players into two different teams and having every member of one team play with every member of the other team. A round is called [i]balanced[/i] if both teams have an equal number of players. A tournament consists of several rounds at the end of which any two players have played each other. The committee organised a tournament last year which consisted of $N$ rounds. Prove that the committee can organise a tournament this year with $N$ balanced rounds. [i]Proposed by Anant Mudgal and Navilarekallu Tejaswi[/i]

Find all prime numbers $ p,q,r$, such that $ \frac{p}{q}\minus{}\frac{4}{r\plus{}1}\equal{}1$

The numbers $1, 2, \ldots, 2012$ are written on a blackboard. Each minute, a student goes up to the board, chooses two numbers $x$ and $y$, erases them, and writes the number $2x+2y$ on the board. This continues until only one number $N$ remains. Find the remainder when the maximum possible value of $N$ is divided by 1000. [i]Victor Wang.[/i]

In a $2\times n$ array we have positive reals s.t. the sum of the numbers in each of the $n$ columns is $1$. Show that we can select a number in each column s.t. the sum of the selected numbers in each row is at most $\frac{n+1}4$.

For any positive integer $n$ consider all representations $n = a_1 + \cdots+ a_k$, where $a_1 > a_2 > \cdots > a_k > 0$ are integers such that for all $i \in \{1, 2, \cdots , k - 1\}$, the number $a_i$ is divisible by $a_{i+1}$. Find the longest such representation of the number $1992.$

Let $ A$ be a subset of the set $ \{1, 2,\ldots,2006\}$, consisting of $ 1004$ elements. Prove that there exist $ 3$ distinct numbers $ a,b,c\in A$ such that $ gcd(a,b)$: a) divides $ c$ b) doesn't divide $ c$