Found problems: 1385
Daniel, Ethan, and Zack are playing a multi-round game of Tetris. Whoever wins $11$ rounds first is crowned the champion. However Zack is trying to pull off a "reverse-sweep", where (at-least) one of the other two players first hits $10$ wins while Zack is still at $0$, but Zack still ends up being the first to reach $11$. How many possible sequences of round wins can lead to Zack pulling off a reverse sweep?
[i]Proposed by Dilhan Salgado[/i]
On a $49\times 69$ rectangle formed by a grid of lattice squares, all $50\cdot 70$ lattice points are colored blue. Two persons play the following game: In each step, a player colors two blue points red, and draws a segment between these two points. (Different segments can intersect in their interior.) Segments are drawn this way until all formerly blue points are colored red. At this moment, the first player directs all segments drawn - i. e., he takes every segment AB, and replaces it either by the vector $\overrightarrow{AB}$, or by the vector $\overrightarrow{BA}$. If the first player succeeds to direct all the segments drawn in such a way that the sum of the resulting vectors is $\overrightarrow{0}$, then he wins; else, the second player wins.
Which player has a winning strategy?
A sequence of positive integers is constructed as follows. If the last digit of $a_n$ is greater than $5$, then $a_{n+1}$ is $9a_n$. If the last digit of $a_n$ is $5$ or less and an has more than one digit, then $a_{n+1}$ is obtained from $a_n$ by deleting the last digit. If $a_n$ has only one digit, which is $5$ or less, then the sequence terminates. Can we choose the first member of the sequence so that it does not terminate?
Two students $A$ and $B$ play a game on a $20 \text{ x } 20$ chessboard. It is known that two squares are said to be [i]adjacent[/i] if the two squares have a common side. At the beginning, there is a chess piece in a certain square of the chessboard. Given that $A$ will be the first one to move the chess piece, $A$ and $B$ will alternately move this chess piece to an adjacent square. Also, the common side of any pair of adjacent squares can only be passed once. If the opponent cannot move anymore, then he will be declared the winner (to clarify since the wording wasn’t that good, you lose if you can’t move). Who among $A$ and $B$ has a winning strategy? Justify your claim.
Two people, $A$ and $B$, play the game of blowing up a balloon. The balloon will explode only when the volume of the balloon $V>2014$ mL. $A$ blows in $1$ mL first, and then they takes turns blowing. It is agreed that the gas blown by each person must not be less than the gas blown by the other party last time and should not be more than twice the amount of gas the other party blew last time. The agreement is that the person who blows up the balloon loses. Who has a winning strategy ? Briefly explain it. (Do not consider the change in volume caused by the change in tension when the balloon is inflated).
Ayala and Barvaz play a game: Ayala initially gives Barvaz two $100\times100$ tables of positive integers, such that the product of numbers in each table is the same. In one move, Barvaz may choose a row or column in one of the tables, and change the numbers in it (to some positive integers), as long as the total product remains the same. Barvaz wins if after $N$ such moves, he manages to make the two tables equal to each other, and otherwise Ayala wins.
a. For which values of $N$ does Barvaz have a winning strategy?
b. For which values of $N$ does Barvaz have a winning strategy, if all numbers in Ayalah’s tables must be powers of $2$?
During a fight, each of the $2001$ roosters has torn out exactly one feather of another rooster, and each rooster has lost a feather. It turned out that among any three roosters there is one who hasn’t torn out a feather from any of the other two roosters. Find the smallest $k$ with the following property: It is always possible to kill $k$ roosters and place the rest into two henhouses in such a way that no two roosters, one of which has torn out a feather from the other one, stay in the same henhouse.
Let $k$ be a positive integer. The organising commitee of a tennis tournament is to schedule the matches for $2k$ players so that every two players play once, each day exactly one match is played, and each player arrives to the tournament site the day of his first match, and departs the day of his last match. For every day a player is present on the tournament, the committee has to pay $1$ coin to the hotel. The organisers want to design the schedule so as to minimise the total cost of all players' stays. Determine this minimum cost.
Give and Take divide $100$ coins between themselves as follows. In each step, Give chooses a handful of coins from the heap, and Take decides who gets this handful. This is repeated until all coins have been taken, or one of them has $9$ handfuls. In the latter case, the other gets all the remaining coins. What is the largest number of coins that Give can be sure of getting no matter what Take does?
(A Shapovalov)
Pasha and Vova play the game crossing out the cells of the $3\times 101$ board by turns. At the start, the central cell is crossed out. By one move the player chooses the diagonal (there can be $1, 2$ or $3$ cells in the diagonal) and crosses out cells of this diagonal which are still uncrossed. At least one new cell must be crossed out by any player's move. Pasha begins, the one who can not make any move loses. Who has a winning strategy?
Each of the six boxes $B_1$, $B_2$, $B_3$, $B_4$, $B_5$, $B_6$ initially contains one coin. The following operations are allowed
Type 1) Choose a non-empty box $B_j$, $1\leq j \leq 5$, remove one coin from $B_j$ and add two coins to $B_{j+1}$;
Type 2) Choose a non-empty box $B_k$, $1\leq k \leq 4$, remove one coin from $B_k$ and swap the contents (maybe empty) of the boxes $B_{k+1}$ and $B_{k+2}$.
Determine if there exists a finite sequence of operations of the allowed types, such that the five boxes $B_1$, $B_2$, $B_3$, $B_4$, $B_5$ become empty, while box $B_6$ contains exactly $2010^{2010^{2010}}$ coins.
[i]Proposed by Hans Zantema, Netherlands[/i]
Albert and Beatrice play a game. $2021$ stones lie on a table. Starting with Albert, they alternatively remove stones from the table, while obeying the following rule. At the $n$-th turn, the active player (Albert if $n$ is odd, Beatrice if $n$ is even) can remove from $1$ to $n$ stones. Thus, Albert first removes $1$ stone; then, Beatrice can remove $1$ or $2$ stones, as she wishes; then, Albert can remove from $1$ to $3$ stones, and so on.
The player who removes the last stone on the table loses, and the other one wins. Which player has a strategy to win regardless of the other player's moves?
Yor and Fiona are playing a match of tennis against each other. The first player to win $6$ games wins the match (while the other player loses the match). Yor has currently won $2$ games, while Fiona has currently won $0$ games. Each game is won by one of the two players: Yor has a probability of $\frac23$ to win each game, while Fiona has a probability of $\frac13$ to win each game. Then, $\frac{m}{n}$ is the probability Fiona wins the tennis match, for relatively prime integers $m,n$. Compute $m$.
Let $\gamma$ be a semicircle with diameter $AB$ . A creek is built with origin in $A$ , which has its vertices alternately in the diameter $AB$ and in the semicircle $\gamma$ , so that its sides make equal angles $\alpha$ with the diameter (but alternately in either direction). It is requested:
a) Values of the angle $\alpha$ for the ravine to pass through the other end $B$ of the diameter.
b) The total length of the ravine, in the case that it ends in $B$ , as a function of the length $d$ of the diameter and of the angle $\alpha$ .
[img]https://cdn.artofproblemsolving.com/attachments/3/c/54c71cdf1bf8fbb3bdfa38f4b14a1dc961c5fe.png[/img]
There are $2000$ components in a circuit, every two of which were initially joined by a wire. The hooligans Vasya and Petya cut the wires one after another. Vasya, who starts, cuts one wire on his turn, while Petya cuts one or three. The hooligan who cuts the last wire from some component loses. Who has the winning strategy?
The archipelago Barrantes - $n$ is a group of islands connected by bridges as follows: there are a main island (Humberto), in the first step I place an island below Humberto and one above from Humberto and I connect these 2 islands to Humberto. I put $2$ islands to the left of these $2$ new islands and I connect them with a bridge to the island that they have on their right. In the second step I take the last $2$ islands and I apply the same process that I applied to Humberto. In the third step I apply the same process to the $4$ new islands. We repeat this step n times we reflect the archipelago that we have on a vertical line to the right of Humberto. We connect Humberto with his reflection and so we have the archipelago Barrantes -$n$. However, the archipelago Barrantes -$n$ exists on a small planet cylindrical, so that the islands to the left of the archipelago are in fact the islands that are connected to the islands on the right. The figure shows the Barrantes archipelago -$2$, The islands at the edges are still numbered to show how the archipelago connects around the cylindrical world, the island numbered $1$ on the left is the same as the island numbered $1$ on the right.
[img]https://cdn.artofproblemsolving.com/attachments/e/c/803d95ce742c2739729fdb4d74af59d4d0652f.png[/img]
One day two bands of pirates arrive at the archipelago Barrantes - $n$: The pirates Black Beard and the Straw Hat Pirates. Blackbeard proposes a game to Straw Hat: The first player conquers an island, the next player must conquer an island connected to the island that was conquered in the previous turn (clearly not conquered on a previous shift). The one who cannot conquer any island in his turn loses. Straw Hat decides to give the first turn to Blackbeard. Prove that Straw Hat has a winning strategy for every $n$.
Let $m$ be a positive integer.
Two players, Axel and Elina play the game HAUKKU ($m$) proceeds as follows:
Axel starts and the players choose integers alternately. Initially, the set of integers is the set of positive divisors of a positive integer $m$ .The player in turn chooses one of the remaining numbers, and removes that number and all of its multiples from the list of selectable numbers. A player who has to choose number $1$, loses. Show that the beginner player, Axel, has a winning strategy in the HAUKKU ($m$) game for all $m \in Z_{+}$.
PS. As member Loppukilpailija noted, it should be written $m>1$, as the statement does not hold for $m = 1$.
On a party with $99$ guests, hosts Ann and Bob play a game (the hosts are not regarded as guests). There are $99$ chairs arranged in a circle; initially, all guests hang around those chairs. The hosts take turns alternately. By a turn, a host orders any standing guest to sit on an unoccupied chair $c$. If some chair adjacent to $c$ is already occupied, the same host orders one guest on such chair to stand up (if both chairs adjacent to $c$ are occupied, the host chooses exactly one of them). All orders are carried out immediately. Ann makes the first move; her goal is to fulfill, after some move of hers, that at least $k$ chairs are occupied. Determine the largest $k$ for which Ann can reach the goal, regardless of Bob's play.
$1992$ vectors are given in the plane. Two players pick unpicked vectors alternately. The winner is the one whose vectors sum to a vector with larger magnitude (or they draw if the magnitudes are the same). Can the first player always avoid losing?
Let $n$ be a positive integer. Two players $A$ and $B$ play a game in which they take turns choosing positive integers $k \le n$. The rules of the game are:
(i) A player cannot choose a number that has been chosen by either player on any previous turn.
(ii) A player cannot choose a number consecutive to any of those the player has already chosen on any previous turn.
(iii) The game is a draw if all numbers have been chosen; otherwise the player who cannot choose a number anymore loses the game.
The player $A$ takes the first turn. Determine the outcome of the game, assuming that both players use optimal strategies.
[i]Proposed by Finland[/i]
Let $\alpha, \beta$ be two rational numbers strictly between 0 and 1. Alice and Bob play a game. At the start of the game, Alice chooses a positive integer $n$. Knowing that, Bob then chooses a positive integer $T$. They then do the following for $T$ rounds: at the $i$th round, Bob chooses a set $X_i$ of $n$ positive integers that form a complete residue system modulo $n$. Then Alice chooses a subset $Y_i$ of $X_i$ such that the sum of elements in $Y_i$ is at most $\alpha$ times the sum of elements in $X_i$. After the $T$ rounds, Alice wins if it is possible to pick an integer $s$ between 0 and $n-1$ such that there are at least $\beta T$ positive integers among the elements in $Y_1, Y_2, . . . , Y_T$ (counted with multiplicities) that are equal to $s \pmod n$, and Bob wins otherwise.
Find all pairs $(\alpha, \beta)$ of rational numbers strictly between 0 and 1 such that Alice has a winning strategy.
[i]Proposed by Hans[/i]
Alicia and Bob take turns writing words on a blackboard.
The rules are as follows:
a) Any word that has been written cannot be rewritten.
b) A player can only write a permutation of the previous word, or can simply simply remove one letter (whatever you want) from the previous word.
c) The first person who cannot write another word loses.
If Alice starts by typing the word ''Olympics" and Bob's next turn, who, do you think, has a winning strategy and what is it?
There are 2018 cards numbered from 1 to 2018. The numbers of the cards are visible at all times. Tito and Pepe play a game. Starting with Tito, they take turns picking cards until they're finished. Then each player sums the numbers on his cards and whoever has an even sum wins. Determine which player has a winning strategy and describe it.
P.S. Proposed by yours truly :-D
Given a positive integer $k$ and other two integers $b > w > 1.$ There are two strings of pearls, a string of $b$ black pearls and a string of $w$ white pearls. The length of a string is the number of pearls on it. One cuts these strings in some steps by the following rules. In each step:
[b](i)[/b] The strings are ordered by their lengths in a non-increasing order. If there are some strings of equal lengths, then the white ones precede the black ones. Then $k$ first ones (if they consist of more than one pearl) are chosen; if there are less than $k$ strings longer than 1, then one chooses all of them.
[b](ii)[/b] Next, one cuts each chosen string into two parts differing in length by at most one. (For instance, if there are strings of $5, 4, 4, 2$ black pearls, strings of $8, 4, 3$ white pearls and $k = 4,$ then the strings of 8 white, 5 black, 4 white and 4 black pearls are cut into the parts $(4,4), (3,2), (2,2)$ and $(2,2)$ respectively.) The process stops immediately after the step when a first isolated white pearl appears.
Prove that at this stage, there will still exist a string of at least two black pearls.
[i]Proposed by Bill Sands, Thao Do, Canada[/i]
Andile and Zandre play a game on a $2017 \times 2017$ board. At the beginning, Andile declares some of the squares [i]forbidden[/i], meaning the nothing may be placed on such a square. After that, they take turns to place coins on the board, with Zandre placing the first coin. It is not allowed to place a coin on a forbidden square or in the same row or column where another coin has already been placed. The player who places the last coin wins the game.
What is the least number of squares Andile needs to declare as forbidden at the beginning to ensure a win? (Assume that both players use an optimal strategy.)