This website contains problems from math contests. Problems and corresponding tags were obtained from the Art of Problem Solving website.

Tags were heavily modified to better represent problems.

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Found problems: 5

2016 Indonesia MO, 3
Tags: balls , combinatorics
There are $5$ boxes arranged in a circle. At first, there is one a box containing one ball, while the other boxes are empty. At each step, we can do one of the following two operations: i. select one box that is not empty, remove one ball from the box and add one ball into both boxes next to the box, ii. select an empty box next to a non-empty box, from the box the non-empty one moves one ball to the empty box. Is it possible, that after a few steps, obtained conditions where each box contains exactly $17^{5^{2016}}$ balls?

1988 Mexico National Olympiad, 1
Tags: balls , combinatorics
In how many ways can one arrange seven white and five black balls in a line in such a way that there are no two neighboring black balls?

2021 Kyiv City MO Round 1, 7.1
Tags: game , balls , combinatorics
Mom brought Andriy and Olesya $4$ balls with the numbers $1, 2, 3$ and $4$ written on them (one on each ball). She held $2$ balls in each hand and did not know which numbers were written on the balls in each hand. The mother asked Andriy to take a ball with a higher number from each hand, and then to keep the ball with the lower number from the two balls he took. After that, she asked Olesya to take two other balls, and out of these two, keep the ball with the higher number. Does the mother know with certainty, which child has the ball with the higher number? [i]Proposed by Bogdan Rublov[/i]

2001 Mexico National Olympiad, 2
Tags: combinatorics , balls , coloring
Given some colored balls (at least three different colors) and at least three boxes. The balls are put into the boxes so that no box is empty and we cannot find three balls of different colors which are in three different boxes. Show that there is a box such that all the balls in all the other boxes have the same color.

1980 Brazil National Olympiad, 1
Tags: balls , algebra
Box $A$ contains black balls and box $B$ contains white balls. Take a certain number of balls from $A$ and place them in $B$. Then take the same number of balls from $B$ and place them in $A$. Is the number of white balls in $A$ then greater, equal to, or less than the number of black balls in $B$?