Let $n$ be a positive integer. Ana and Banana play a game. Banana thinks of a function $f\colon\mathbb{Z}\to\mathbb{Z}$ and a prime number $p$. He tells Ana that $f$ is nonconstant, $p<100$, and $f(x+p)=f(x)$ for all integers $x$. Ana's goal is to determine the value of $p$. She writes down $n$ integers $x_1,\dots,x_n$. After seeing this list, Banana writes down $f(x_1),\dots,f(x_n)$ in order. Ana wins if she can determine the value of $p$ from this information. Find the smallest value of $n$ for which Ana has a winning strategy. [i]Anthony Wang[/i]

On an infinite chessboard, a solitaire game is played as follows: at the start, we have $n^2$ pieces occupying a square of side $n.$ The only allowed move is to jump over an occupied square to an unoccupied one, and the piece which has been jumped over is removed. For which $n$ can the game end with only one piece remaining on the board?

Two players play a game on an $8$ by $8$ chessboard according to the following rules. The first player places a knight on the board. Then each player in turn moves the knight , but cannot place it on a square where it has been before. The player who has no move loses. Who wins in an errorless game , the first player or the second one? (The knight moves are the normal ones. ) (V . Zudilin , year 12 student , Beltsy (Moldova))

There are $36$ cards in a deck arranged in the sequence spades, clubs, hearts, diamonds, spades, clubs, hearts, diamonds, etc. Somebody took part of this deck off the top, turned it upside down, and cut this part into the remaining part of the deck (i.e. inserted it between two consecutive cards). Then four cards were taken off the top, then another four, etc. Prove that in any of these sets of four cards, all the cards are of different suits. (A Merkov, Moscow)

Seated in a circle are $11$ wizards. A different positive integer not exceeding $1000$ is pasted onto the forehead of each. A wizard can see the numbers of the other $10$, but not his own. Simultaneously, each wizard puts up either his left hand or his right hand. Then each declares the number on his forehead at the same time. Is there a strategy on which the wizards can agree beforehand, which allows each of them to make the correct declaration?

At a table tennis competition, every pair of players played each other exactly once. Every boy beat thrice as many boys as girls, and every girl was beaten by twice as many girls as boys. How many competitors were there, if we know that there were $10$ more boys than girls? There are no draws in table tennis, every match was won by one of the two players.

Two players in turns color the sides of an $n$-gon. The first player colors any side that has $0$ or $2$ common vertices with already colored sides. The second player colors any side that has exactly $1$ common vertex with already colored sides. The player who cannot move, loses. For which $n$ the second player has a winning strategy?

There is an empty table with $2^{100}$ rows and $100$ columns. Alice and Eva take turns filling the empty cells of the first row of the table, Alice plays first. In each move, Alice chooses an empty cell and puts a cross in it; Eva in each move chooses an empty cell and puts a zero. When no empty cells remain in the first row, the players move on to the second row, and so on (in each new row Alice plays first). The game ends when all the rows are filled. Alice wants to make as many different rows in the table as possible, while Eva wants to make as few as possible. How many different rows will be there in the table if both follow their best strategies? Proposed by Denis Afrizonov

There are a million numbered chairs at a large round table. The Sultan has seated a million wise men on them. Each of them sees the thousand people following him in clockwise order. Each of them was given a cap of black or white color, and they must simultaneously write down on their own piece of paper a guess about the color of their cap. Those who do not guess will be executed. The wise men had the opportunity to agree on a strategy before the test. What is the largest number of survivors that they can guarantee?

Fix an integer $k>2$. Two players, called Ana and Banana, play the following game of numbers. Initially, some integer $n \ge k$ gets written on the blackboard. Then they take moves in turn, with Ana beginning. A player making a move erases the number $m$ just written on the blackboard and replaces it by some number $m'$ with $k \le m' < m$ that is coprime to $m$. The first player who cannot move anymore loses. An integer $n \ge k $ is called good if Banana has a winning strategy when the initial number is $n$, and bad otherwise. Consider two integers $n,n' \ge k$ with the property that each prime number $p \le k$ divides $n$ if and only if it divides $n'$. Prove that either both $n$ and $n'$ are good or both are bad.

[b]p1.[/b] Prove that the equation $x^6 - 143x^5 - 917x^4 + 51x^3 + 77x^2 + 291x + 1575 = 0$ has no integer solutions. [b]p2.[/b] There are $81$ wheels in a storage marked by their two types, say first and second type. Wheels of the same type weigh equally. Any wheel of the second type is much lighter than a wheel of the first type. It is known that exactly one wheel is marked incorrectly. Show that it can be detected with certainty after four measurements on a balance scale. [b]p3.[/b] Rob and Ann multiplied the numbers from $1$ to $100$ and calculated the sum of digits of this product. For this sum, Rob calculated the sum of its digits as well. Then Ann kept repeating this operation until he got a one-digit number. What was this number? [b]p4.[/b] Rui and Jui take turns placing bishops on the squares of the $ 8\times 8$ chessboard in such a way that bishops cannot attack one another. (In this game, the color of the rooks is irrelevant.) The player who cannot place a rook loses the game. Rui takes the first turn. Who has a winning strategy, and what is it? [b]p5.[/b] The following figure can be cut along sides of small squares into several (more than one) identical shapes. What is the smallest number of such identical shapes you can get? [img]https://cdn.artofproblemsolving.com/attachments/8/e/9cd09a04209774dab34bc7f989b79573453f35.png[/img] PS. You should use hide for answers. Collected [url=https://artofproblemsolving.com/community/c5h2760506p24143309]here[/url].

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.

Let $n$ be a given positive integer. Sisyphus performs a sequence of turns on a board consisting of $n + 1$ squares in a row, numbered $0$ to $n$ from left to right. Initially, $n$ stones are put into square $0$, and the other squares are empty. At every turn, Sisyphus chooses any nonempty square, say with $k$ stones, takes one of these stones and moves it to the right by at most $k$ squares (the stone should say within the board). Sisyphus' aim is to move all $n$ stones to square $n$. Prove that Sisyphus cannot reach the aim in less than \[ \left \lceil \frac{n}{1} \right \rceil + \left \lceil \frac{n}{2} \right \rceil + \left \lceil \frac{n}{3} \right \rceil + \dots + \left \lceil \frac{n}{n} \right \rceil \] turns. (As usual, $\lceil x \rceil$ stands for the least integer not smaller than $x$. )

The figure below shows a hexagonal net formed by many congruent equilateral triangles. Taking turns, Gabriel and Arnaldo play a game as follows. On his turn, the player colors in a segment, including the endpoints, following these three rules: i) The endpoints must coincide with vertices of the marked equilateral triangles. ii) The segment must be made up of one or more of the sides of the triangles. iii) The segment cannot contain any point (endpoints included) of a previously colored segment. Gabriel plays first, and the player that cannot make a legal move loses. Find a winning strategy and describe it.

There are $256$ players in a tennis tournament who are ranked from $1$ to $256$, with $1$ corresponding to the highest rank and $256$ corresponding to the lowest rank. When two players play a match in the tournament, the player whose rank is higher wins the match with probability $\frac{3}{5}$. In each round of the tournament, the player with the highest rank plays against the player with the second highest rank, the player with the third highest rank plays against the player with the fourth highest rank, and so on. At the end of the round, the players who win proceed to the next round and the players who lose exit the tournament. After eight rounds, there is one player remaining and they are declared the winner. Determine the expected value of the rank of the winner.