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

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Found problems: 1385

Ana and Bety play a game alternating turns. Initially, Ana chooses an odd possitive integer and composite $n$ such that $2^j<n<2^{j+1}$ with $2<j$. In her first turn Bety chooses an odd composite integer $n_1$ such that \[n_1\leq \frac{1^n+2^n+\dots+(n-1)^n}{2(n-1)^{n-1}}.\] Then, on her other turn, Ana chooses a prime number $p_1$ that divides $n_1$. If the prime that Ana chooses is $3$, $5$ or $7$, the Ana wins; otherwise Bety chooses an odd composite positive integer $n_2$ such that \[n_2\leq \frac{1^{p_1}+2^{p_1}+\dots+(p_1-1)^{p_1}}{2(p_1-1)^{p_1-1}}.\] After that, on her turn, Ana chooses a prime $p_2$ that divides $n_2,$, if $p_2$ is $3$, $5$, or $7$, Ana wins, otherwise the process repeats. Also, Ana wins if at any time Bety cannot choose an odd composite positive integer in the corresponding range. Bety wins if she manages to play at least $j-1$ turns. Find which of the two players has a winning strategy.
Let $n$ be a positive integer. Ana and Banana are playing the following game: First, Ana arranges $2n$ cups in a row on a table, each facing upside-down. She then places a ball under a cup and makes a hole in the table under some other cup. Banana then gives a finite sequence of commands to Ana, where each command consists of swapping two adjacent cups in the row. Her goal is to achieve that the ball has fallen into the hole during the game. Assuming Banana has no information about the position of the hole and the position of the ball at any point, what is the smallest number of commands she has to give in order to achieve her goal?
A hunter and an invisible rabbit play a game in the Euclidean plane. The rabbit's starting point, $A_0,$ and the hunter's starting point, $B_0$ are the same. After $n-1$ rounds of the game, the rabbit is at point $A_{n-1}$ and the hunter is at point $B_{n-1}.$ In the $n^{\text{th}}$ round of the game, three things occur in order: [list=i] [*]The rabbit moves invisibly to a point $A_n$ such that the distance between $A_{n-1}$ and $A_n$ is exactly $1.$ [*]A tracking device reports a point $P_n$ to the hunter. The only guarantee provided by the tracking device to the hunter is that the distance between $P_n$ and $A_n$ is at most $1.$ [*]The hunter moves visibly to a point $B_n$ such that the distance between $B_{n-1}$ and $B_n$ is exactly $1.$ [/list] Is it always possible, no matter how the rabbit moves, and no matter what points are reported by the tracking device, for the hunter to choose her moves so that after $10^9$ rounds, she can ensure that the distance between her and the rabbit is at most $100?$ [i]Proposed by Gerhard Woeginger, Austria[/i]
Players $A$ and $B$ play a game with $N \geq 2012$ coins and $2012$ boxes arranged around a circle. Initially $A$ distributes the coins among the boxes so that there is at least $1$ coin in each box. Then the two of them make moves in the order $B,A,B,A,\ldots $ by the following rules: [b](a)[/b] On every move of his $B$ passes $1$ coin from every box to an adjacent box. [b](b)[/b] On every move of hers $A$ chooses several coins that were [i]not[/i] involved in $B$'s previous move and are in different boxes. She passes every coin to an adjacent box. Player $A$'s goal is to ensure at least $1$ coin in each box after every move of hers, regardless of how $B$ plays and how many moves are made. Find the least $N$ that enables her to succeed.
A hunter and an invisible rabbit play a game on an infinite square grid. First the hunter fixes a colouring of the cells with finitely many colours. The rabbit then secretly chooses a cell to start in. Every minute, the rabbit reports the colour of its current cell to the hunter, and then secretly moves to an adjacent cell that it has not visited before (two cells are adjacent if they share an edge). The hunter wins if after some finite time either:[list][*]the rabbit cannot move; or [*]the hunter can determine the cell in which the rabbit started.[/list]Decide whether there exists a winning strategy for the hunter. [i]Proposed by Aron Thomas[/i]
There is a pile of $1000$ matches. Two players each take turns and can take $1$ to $5$ matches. It is also allowed at most $10$ times during the whole game to take $6$ matches, for example $7$ exceptional moves can be done by the first player and $3$ moves by the second and then no more exceptional moves are allowed. Whoever takes the last match wins. Determine which player has a winning strategy.
[b]p1.[/b] Thirty players participate in a chess tournament. Every player plays one game with every other player. What maximal number of players can get exactly $5$ points? (any game adds $1$ point to the winner’s score, $0$ points to a loser’s score, in the case of a draw each player obtains $1/2$ point.) [b]p2.[/b] A father and his son returned from a fishing trip. To make their catches equal the father gave to his son some of his fish. If, instead, the son had given his father the same number of fish, then father would have had twice as many fish as his son. What percent more is the father's catch more than his son's? [b]p3.[/b] What is the maximal number of pieces of two shapes, [img]https://cdn.artofproblemsolving.com/attachments/a/5/6c567cf6a04b0aa9e998dbae3803b6eeb24a35.png[/img] and [img]https://cdn.artofproblemsolving.com/attachments/8/a/7a7754d0f2517c93c5bb931fb7b5ae8f5e3217.png[/img], that can be used to tile a $7\times 7$ square? [b]p4.[/b] Six shooters participate in a shooting competition. Every participant has $5$ shots. Each shot adds from 1 to $10$ points to shooter’s score. Every person can score totally for all five shots from $5$ to $50$ points. Each participant gets $7$ points for at least one of his shots. The scores of all participants are different. We enumerate the shooters $1$ to $6$ according to their scores, the person with maximal score obtains number $1$, the next one obtains number $2$, the person with minimal score obtains number $6$. What score does obtain the participant number 3? The total number of all obtained points is $264$. [b]p5.[/b] There are $2014$ stones in a pile. Two players play the following game. First, player $A$ takes some number of stones (from $1$ to $30$) from the pile, then player B takes $1$ or $2$ stones, then player $A$ takes $2$ or $3$ stones, then player $B$ takes $3$ or $4$ stones, then player A takes $4$ or $5$ stones, etc. The player who gets the last stone is the winner. If no player gets the last stone (there is at least one stone in the pile but the next move is not allowed) then the game results in a draw. Who wins the game using the right strategy? PS. You should use hide for answers. Collected [url=https://artofproblemsolving.com/community/c5h2760506p24143309]here[/url].
There is a token in one of the nodes of a hexagon with side $n$, divided into regular triangles (see figure). Two players take turns moving it to one of the neighboring nodes, and it is forbidden to go to a node that the token has already visited. The one who loses who can't make a move. Who wins with the right game? [img]https://cdn.artofproblemsolving.com/attachments/2/f/18314fe7f9f4cd8e783037a8e5642e17f4e1be.png[/img]
[b]p1.[/b] On the island of Nevermind some people are liars; they always lie. The remaining habitants of the island are truthlovers; they tell only the truth. Three habitants of the island, $A, B$, and $C$ met this morning. $A$ said: “All of us are liars”. $B$ said: “Only one of us is a truthlover”. Who of them is a liar and who of them is a truthlover? [b]p2.[/b] Pinocchio has $9$ pieces of paper. He is allowed to take a piece of paper and cut it in $5$ pieces or $7$ pieces which increases the number of his pieces. Then he can take again one of his pieces of paper and cut it in $5$ pieces or $7$ pieces. He can do this again and again as many times as he wishes. Can he get $2004$ pieces of paper? [b]p3.[/b] In Dragonland there are coins of $1$ cent, $2$ cents, $10$ cents, $20$ cents, and $50$ cents. What is the largest amount of money one can have in coins, yet still not be able to make exactly $1$ dollar? [b]p4.[/b] Find all solutions $a, b, c, d, e$ if it is known that they represent distinct digits and satisfy the following: $\begin{tabular}{ccccc} & a & b & c & d \\ + & a & c & a & c \\ \hline c & d & e & b & c \\ \end{tabular}$ [b]p5.[/b] Two players play the following game. On the lowest left square of an $8\times 8$ chessboard there is a rook. The first player is allowed to move the rook up or to the right by an arbitrary number of squares. The second player is also allowed to move the rook up or to the right by an arbitrary number of squares. Then the first player is allowed to do this again, and so on. The one who moves the rook to the upper right square wins. Who has a winning strategy? PS. You should use hide for answers. Collected [url=https://artofproblemsolving.com/community/c5h2760506p24143309]here[/url].
Alice and Bob play the following game. They write the expressions $x + y$, $x - y$, $x^2+xy+y^2$ and $x^2-xy+y^2$ each on a separate card. The four cards are shuffled and placed face down on a table. One of the cards is turned over, revealing the expression written on it, after which Alice chooses any two of the four cards, and gives the other two to Bob. All cards are then revealed. Now Alice picks one of the variables $x$ and $y$, assigns a real value to it, and tells Bob what value she assigned and to which variable. Then Bob assigns a real value to the other variable. Finally, they both evaluate the product of the expressions on their two cards. Whoever gets the larger result, wins. Which player, if any, has a winning strategy?
Three persons $A,B,C$, are playing the following game: A $k$-element subset of the set $\{1, . . . , 1986\}$ is randomly chosen, with an equal probability of each choice, where $k$ is a fixed positive integer less than or equal to $1986$. The winner is $A,B$ or $C$, respectively, if the sum of the chosen numbers leaves a remainder of $0, 1$, or $2$ when divided by $3$. For what values of $k$ is this game a fair one? (A game is fair if the three outcomes are equally probable.)
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 $x$. )
Alice and Brian are playing a game on the real line. To start the game, Alice places a checker on a number $x$ where $0 < x < 1$. In each move, Brian chooses a positive number $d$. Alice must move the checker to either $x + d$ or $x - d$. If it lands on $0$ or $1$, Brian wins. Otherwise the game proceeds to the next move. For which values of $x$ does Brian have a strategy which allows him to win the game in a finite number of moves?
A square board is dissected into $n^2$ rectangular cells by $n-1$ horizontal and $n-1$ vertical lines. The cells are painted alternately black and white in a chessboard pattern. One diagonal consists of $n$ black cells which are squares. Prove that the total area of all black cells is not less than the total area of all white cells.
In a multiplication table, the entry in the $i$-th row and the $j$-th column is the product $ij$ From an $m\times n$ subtable with both $m$ and $n$ odd, the interior $(m-2) (n-2)$ rectangle is removed, leaving behind a frame of width $1$. The squares of the frame are painted alternately black and white. Prove that the sum of the numbers in the black squares is equal to the sum of the numbers in the white squares.
A serpentine is a sequence of points $P_1 , ..., P_m$ in a plane, not necessarily all different, such that the distance between $P_i$ and $P_{i+1}$ is at least 1, and the segments $P_i P_{i +1}$ are alternately horizontal and vertical. Construct a compact set in which there is a sequence of serpentines with arbitrary long lengths but there is no closed serpentine ($P_m = P_i$ for some i < m).
On every square of a chessboard, there are as many grains as shown on the picture. Starting from an arbitrary square, a knight starts a journey over the chessboard. After every move it eats up all the grains from the square it arrived to, but when it leaves, the same number of grains is put back on the square. After some time the knight returns to its initial square. Prove that the total number of grains the knight has eaten up during the journey is divisible by $3$. [img]https://services.artofproblemsolving.com/download.php?id=YXR0YWNobWVudHMvZC8xL2IwOGZlODYxMDg1MWMwMWUwMjFkOGJkMWQ2MjA4YzIzZmQ5YTc5LnBuZw==&rn=U2NyZWVuIFNob3QgMjAyMS0wNC0yOCBhdCA3LjIzLjA3IEFNLnBuZw==[/img]
On the table are $300$ coins. Petya, Vasya and Tolya play the next game. They go in turn in the following order: Petya, Vasya, Tolya, Petya. Vasya, Tolya, etc. In one move, Petya can take $1, 2, 3$, or $4$ coins from the table, Vasya, $1$ or $2$ coins, and Tolya, too, $1$ or $2$ coins. Can Vasya and Tolya agree so that, as if Petya were playing, one of them two will take the last coin off the table?
A game of Jai Alai has eight players and starts with players $P_1$ and $P_2$ on court and the other players $P_3, P_4, P_5, P_6, P_7, P_8$ waiting in a queue. After each point is played, the loser goes to the end of the queue; the winner adds $1$ point to his score and stays on the court; and the player at the head of the queue comes on to contest the next point. Play continues until someone has scored $7$ points. At that moment, we observe that a total of $37$ points have been scored by all eight players. Determine who has won and justify your answer.
Amy and Bob play the game. At the beginning, Amy writes down a positive integer on the board. Then the players take moves in turn, Bob moves first. On any move of his, Bob replaces the number $n$ on the blackboard with a number of the form $n-a^2$, where $a$ is a positive integer. On any move of hers, Amy replaces the number $n$ on the blackboard with a number of the form $n^k$, where $k$ is a positive integer. Bob wins if the number on the board becomes zero. Can Amy prevent Bob’s win? [i]Maxim Didin, Russia[/i]
A game is played between two players on a $10 \times 10$ checkerboard. They move alternately, the first player marking $X$s on vacant cells and the second $O$s. When all $100$ cells have been marked, they calculate two numbers $C$ and $Z$. $C$ is the total number of five consecutive $X$s in a row, a column or a diagonal, so that $6$ consecutive $X$s contribute a count of $2$ to $C$, $7$ consecutive $X$s contribute $3$, and so on. Similarly, $Z$ is the total number of five consecutive Os. The first player wins if $C > Z$, loses if $C < Z$ and draws if $C = Z$. Does the first player have a strategy which guarantees (a) a draw or a win (b) a win regardless of the counter-strategy of the second player? (A Belov)
Joe and Penny play a game. Initially there are $5000$ stones in a pile, and the two players remove stones from the pile by making a sequence of moves. On the $k$-th move, any number of stones between $1$ and $k$ inclusive may be removed. Joe makes the odd-numbered moves and Penny makes the even-numbered moves. The player who removes the very last stone is the winner. Who wins if both players play perfectly?
$n$ points were chosen on a circle. Two players are playing the following game: On every move a point is chosen and it is connected with an edge to an adjacent point or with the center of the circle. The winner is the player, after whose move each point can be reached by any other (including the center) by moving on the constructed edges. Find who of the two players has a winning strategy.
In the middle cell of the $1 \times 2005$ strip there is a chip. Two players each queues move it: first, the first player moves the piece one cell in any direction, then the second one moves it $2$ cells, the $1$st - by $4$ cells, the 2nd by $8$, etc. (the $k$-th shift occurs by $2^{k-1}$ cells). That, whoever cannot make another move loses. Who can win regardless of the opponent's play?
Twenty players participated in a chess tournament. Each player faced every other player exactly once and each match ended with either player winning or a draw. In this tournament, it was noticed that for every match that ended in a draw, each of the other $18$ players won at least one of the two players involved in it. We also know that at least two games ended in a draw. Show that it is possible to name the players as $P_1, P_2, ...., P_{20}$ so that player $P_k$ beat player $P_{k+1}$, to each $k \in \{ 1, 2, 3,... , 19\}$.