Consider a $7\times7$ chessboard that starts out with all the squares white. We start painting squares black, one at a time, according to the rule that after painting the first square, each newly painted square must be adjacent along a side to only the square just previously painted. The final figure painted will be a connected “snake” of squares. (a) Show that it is possible to paint $31$ squares. (b) Show that it is possible to paint $32$ squares. (c) Show that it is possible to paint $33$ squares.

A cell is cut from a chessboard $8\, x\, 8$, after which an open broken line was built, which vertices are the centers of the remaining cells. Each segment of the broken line has a length $\sqrt{17}$ or $\sqrt{65}$. When is the number of such broken lines bigger – when the cut cell is $(1,2)$ or $(3,6)$? (The rows and columns on the board are numerated consecutively from 1 to 8.)

Distinct pebbles are placed on a $1001 \times 1001$ board consisting of $1001^2$ unit tiles, such that every unit tile consists of at most one pebble. The [i]pebble set[/i] of a unit tile is the set of all pebbles situated in the same row or column with said unit tile. Determine the minimum amount of pebbles that must be placed on the board so that no two distinct tiles have the same [i]pebble set[/i]. [hide=Where's the Algebra Problem?]It's already posted [url=https://artofproblemsolving.com/community/c6h2742895_simple_inequality]here[/url].[/hide]

Find the relation of the black part length and the white part length for the main diagonal of the a) $100\times 99$ chess-board; b) $101\times 99$ chess-board.

Consider a board of $a \times b$, with $a$ and $b$ integers greater than or equal to $2$. Initially their squares are colored black and white like a chess board. The permitted operation consists of choosing two squares with a common side and recoloring them as follows: a white square becomes black; a black box turns green; a green box turns white. Determine for which values of $a$ and $b$ it is possible, by a succession of allowed operations, to make all the squares that were initially white end black and all the squares that were initially black end white. Clarification: Initially there are no green squares, but they appear after the first operation.

The plan of a picture gallery is a chequered figure where each square is a room, and every room can be reached from each other by moving to adjacent rooms. A custodian in a room can watch all the rooms that can be reached from this room by one move of a chess queen (without leaving the gallery). What minimum number of custodians is sufficient to watch all the rooms in every gallery of $n$ rooms ($n > 2$)?

Player $A$ and player $B$ play the next game on an $8$ by $8$ square chessboard. They in turn color a field that is not yet colored. One player uses red and the other blue. Player $A$ starts. The winner is the first person to color the four squares of a square of $2$ by $2$ squares with his color somewhere on the board. Prove that player $B$ can always prevent player $A$ from winning.

Stoyan and Nikolai have two $100\times 100$ chess boards. Both of them number each cell with the numbers $1$ to $10000$ in some way. Is it possible that for every two numbers $a$ and $b$, which share a common side in Nikolai's board, these two numbers are at a knight's move distance in Stoyan's board (that is, a knight can move from one of the cells to the other one with a move)? [i]Nikolai Beluhov[/i]

Given a board with size $25\times 25$. Some $1\times 1$ squares are marked, so that for each $13\times 13$ and $4\times 4$ sub-boards, there are atleast $\frac{1}{2}$ marked parts of the sub-board. Find the least possible amount of marked squares in the entire board.

Consider a checkered board $2m \times 2n$, $m, n \in \mathbb{Z}_{>0}$. A stone is placed on one of the unit squares on the board, this square is different from the upper right square and from the lower left square. A snail goes from the bottom left square and wants to get to the top right square, walking from one square to other adjacent, one square at a time (two squares are adjacent if they share an edge). Determine all the squares the stone can be in so that the snail can complete its path by visiting each square exactly one time, except the square with the stone, which the snail does not visit.

Let $n\geq 3$ be an integer. Find the number of ways in which one can place the numbers $1, 2, 3, \ldots, n^2$ in the $n^2$ squares of a $n \times n$ chesboard, one on each, such that the numbers in each row and in each column are in arithmetic progression.

Let $m$ and $n$ be positive integers. Some squares of an $m \times n$ board are coloured red. A sequence $a_1, a_2, \ldots , a_{2r}$ of $2r \ge 4$ pairwise distinct red squares is called a [i]bishop circuit[/i] if for every $k \in \{1, \ldots , 2r \}$, the squares $a_k$ and $a_{k+1}$ lie on a diagonal, but the squares $a_k$ and $a_{k+2}$ do not lie on a diagonal (here $a_{2r+1}=a_1$ and $a_{2r+2}=a_2$). In terms of $m$ and $n$, determine the maximum possible number of red squares on an $m \times n$ board without a bishop circuit. ([i]Remark.[/i] Two squares lie on a diagonal if the line passing through their centres intersects the sides of the board at an angle of $45^\circ$.)

A knight is modified so that it moves $p$ fields horizontally or vertically and $q$ fields in the perpendicular direction. It is placed on an infinite chessboard. If the knight returns to the initial field after $n$ moves, show that $n$ must be even.

On a $999\times 999$ board a [i]limp rook[/i] can move in the following way: From any square it can move to any of its adjacent squares, i.e. a square having a common side with it, and every move must be a turn, i.e. the directions of any two consecutive moves must be perpendicular. A [i]non-intersecting route[/i] of the limp rook consists of a sequence of pairwise different squares that the limp rook can visit in that order by an admissible sequence of moves. Such a non-intersecting route is called [i]cyclic[/i], if the limp rook can, after reaching the last square of the route, move directly to the first square of the route and start over. How many squares does the longest possible cyclic, non-intersecting route of a limp rook visit? [i]Proposed by Nikolay Beluhov, Bulgaria[/i]

For an integer $m\geq 1$, we consider partitions of a $2^m\times 2^m$ chessboard into rectangles consisting of cells of chessboard, in which each of the $2^m$ cells along one diagonal forms a separate rectangle of side length $1$. Determine the smallest possible sum of rectangle perimeters in such a partition. [i]Proposed by Gerhard Woeginger, Netherlands[/i]

The squares of a chessboard have side $4$. What is the circumference of the largest circle that can be drawn entirely on the black squares of the board?