For $n \geq 3$ and $a_{1} \leq a_{2} \leq \ldots \leq a_{n}$ given real numbers we have the following instructions: - place out the numbers in some order in a ring; - delete one of the numbers from the ring; - if just two numbers are remaining in the ring: let $S$ be the sum of these two numbers. Otherwise, if there are more the two numbers in the ring, replace Afterwards start again with the step (2). Show that the largest sum $S$ which can result in this way is given by the formula \[S_{max}= \sum^n_{k=2} \begin{pmatrix} n -2 \\ [\frac{k}{2}] - 1\end{pmatrix}a_{k}.\]

A chess club consists of at least $10$ and at most $50$ members, where $G$ of them are female, and $B$ of them are male with $G>B$. In a chess tournament, each member plays with any other member exactly one time. At each game, the winner gains $1$, the loser gains $0$ and both player gains $1/2$ point when a tie occurs. At the tournament, it is observed that each member gained exactly half of his/her points from the games played against male members. How many different values can $B$ take? $ \textbf{(A)}\ 5 \qquad\textbf{(B)}\ 4 \qquad\textbf{(C)}\ 3 \qquad\textbf{(D)}\ 2 \qquad\textbf{(E)}\ 1 $

A student is playing computer. Computer shows randomly 2002 positive numbers. Game's rules let do the following operations - to take 2 numbers from these, to double first one, to add the second one and to save the sum. - to take another 2 numbers from the remainder numbers, to double the first one, to add the second one, to multiply this sum with previous and to save the result. - to repeat this procedure, until all the 2002 numbers won't be used. Student wins the game if final product is maximum possible. Find the winning strategy and prove it.

In a $7\times7$ board, some squares are painted red. Let $a$ be the number of rows that have an odd number of red squares and let $b$ be the number of columns that have an odd number of red squares. Find all possible values of $a+b$. For each value found, give a example of how the board can be painted.

Vlad draws 100 rays in the Euclidean plane. David then draws a line $\ell$ and pays Vlad one pound for each ray that $\ell$ intersects. Naturally, David wants to pay as little as possible. What is the largest amount of money that Vlad can get from David? [i]Proposed by Vlad Spătaru[/i]

Numbers from $1$ to $49$ are randomly placed in a $35 \times 35$ table such that number $i$ is used exactly $i$ times. Some random cells of the table are removed so that table falls apart into several connected (by sides) polygons. Among them, the one with the largest area is chosen (if there are several of the same largest areas, a random one of them is chosen). What is the largest number of cells that can be removed that guarantees that in the chosen polygon there is a number which occurs at least $15$ times?

Three coins are placed at the origin of a Cartesian coordinate system. On one move one removes a coin placed at some position $(x, y)$ and places three new coins at $(x+1, y)$, $(x, y+1)$ and $(x+1, y+1)$. Prove that after finitely many moves, there will exist two coins placed at the same point.

Is it possible to divide the plane into polygons so that each polygon is transformed into itself under some rotation by $360/7$ degrees about some point? All sides of these polygons must be greater than $1$ cm. (A polygon is the part of a plane bounded by one non-self-intersect-ing closed broken line, not necessarily convex.) (A. Andjans, Riga)

An evil witch is making a potion to poison the people of PUMAClandia. In order for the potion to work, the number of poison dart frogs cannot exceed $5$, the number of wolves’ teeth must be an even number, and the number of dragon scales has to be a multiple of $6$. She can also put in any number of tiger nails. Given that the stew has exactly $2021$ ingredients, in how many ways can she add ingredients for her potion to work?

Given a positive integer $n$, find the proportion of the subsets of $\{1,2, \ldots, 2n\}$ such that their smallest element is odd.

Suppose that a point in the plane is called [i]good[/i] if it has rational coordinates. Prove that all good points can be divided into three sets satisfying: 1) If the centre of the circle is good, then there are three points in the circle from each of the three sets. 2) There are no three collinear points that are from each of the three sets.

There are $50$ male and $50$ female members registered in the QED-DB, who are also there are numbered from $1$ to $100$. In $100$ rounds, Andreas chooses at random one member for the seminar in Bad Tolz, whereupon Katharina already has two each time selected QED members of different sexes may or may not be paired up. Of course QED members cannot be coupled multiple times, ignoring relationships from the time before but both conscientiously. The stability of a relationship between two QED members is the amount of the difference between their numbers in DB and the sum of all stabilities is the promotion of young talent in the QED. What is the greatest possible demand of offspring guaranteed to achieve orgasm? [hide=original wording]In der QED-DB sind 50 m¨annliche und 50 weibliche Mitglieder eingetragen, welche dort mit den Zahlen von 1 bis 100 durchnummeriert sind. In 100 Runden w¨ahlt Andreas jeweils zuf¨allig ein Mitglied fu¨r das Seminar in Bad T¨olz aus, woraufhin jedes Mal Katharina zwei bereits ausgew¨ahlte QEDler unterschiedlichen Geschlechts verkuppeln darf, aber nicht muss. Natu¨rlich k¨onnen QEDler nicht mehrfach verkuppelt werden, Beziehungen aus der Zeit davor ignorieren beide aber gewissenhaft. Die Stabilit¨at einer Beziehung zwischen zwei QEDlern ist der Betrag der Differenz ihrer Zahlen in der DB und die Summe aller Stabilit¨aten ist die Nachwuchsf¨orderung im QED. Was ist die gr¨oßtm¨ogliche Nachwuchsf¨orderung, welche die Orgas garantiert erreichen k¨onnen¿[/hide]

You are traveling in a foreign country whose currency consists of five different-looking kinds of coins. You have several of each coin in your pocket. You remember that the coins are worth $1, 2, 5, 10$, and $20$ florins, but you have no idea which coin is which and you don’t speak the local language. You find a vending machine where a single candy can be bought for $1$ florin: you insert any kind of coin, and receive $1$ candy plus any change owed. You can only buy one candy at a time, but you can buy as many as you want, one after the other. What is the least number of candies that you must buy to ensure that you can determine the values of all the coins? Prove that your answer is correct.

[u]Round 1[/u] [b]p1.[/b] In a chemical lab there are three vials: one that can hold $1$ oz of fluid, another that can hold $2$ oz, and a third that can hold $3$ oz. The first is filled with grape juice, the second with sulfuric acid, and the third with water. There are also $3$ empty vials in the cupboard, also of sizes $1$ oz, $2$ oz, and $3$ oz. In order to save the world with grape-flavored acid, James Bond must make three full bottles, one of each size, filled with a mixture of all three liquids so that each bottle has the same ratio of juice to acid to water. How can he do this, considering he was silly enough not to bring any equipment? [b]p2.[/b] Twelve people, some are knights and some are knaves, are sitting around a table. Knaves always lie and knights always tell the truth. At some point they start up a conversation. The first person says, “There are no knights around this table.” The second says, “There is at most one knight at this table.” The third – “There are at most two knights at the table.” And so on until the $12$th says, “There are at most eleven knights at the table.” How many knights are at the table? Justify your answer. [b]p3.[/b] Aquaman has a barrel divided up into six sections, and he has placed a red herring in each. Aquaman can command any fish of his choice to either ‘jump counterclockwise to the next sector’ or ‘jump clockwise to the next sector.’ Using a sequence of exactly $30$ of these commands, can he relocate all the red herrings to one sector? If yes, show how. If no, explain why not. [img]https://cdn.artofproblemsolving.com/attachments/0/f/956f64e346bae82dee5cbd1326b0d1789100f3.png[/img] [b]p4.[/b] Is it possible to place $13$ integers around a circle so that the sum of any $3$ adjacent numbers is exactly $13$? [b]p5.[/b] Two girls are playing a game. The first player writes the letters $A$ or $B$ in a row, left to right, adding one letter on her turn. The second player switches any two letters after each move by the first player (the letters do not have to be adjacent), or does nothing, which also counts as a move. The game is over when each player has made $2011$ moves. Can the second player plan her moves so that the resulting letters form a palindrome? (A palindrome is a sequence that reads the same forward and backwards, e.g. $AABABAA$.) [u]Round 2[/u] [b]p6.[/b] Eight students participated in a math competition. There were eight problems to solve. Each problem was solved by exactly five people. Show that there are two students who solved all eight problems between them. [b]p7.[/b] There are $3n$ checkers of three different colors: $n$ red, $n$ green and $n$ blue. They were used to randomly fill a board with $3$ rows and $n$ columns so that each square of the board has one checker on it. Prove that it is possible to reshuffle the checkers within each row so that in each column there are checkers of all three colors. Moving checkers to a different row is not allowed. PS. You should use hide for answers. Collected [url=https://artofproblemsolving.com/community/c5h2760506p24143309]here[/url].

Let $n$ be any positive integer and $M$ a set that contains $n$ positive integers. A sequence with $2^n$ elements is christmassy if every element of the sequence is an element of $M$. Prove that, in any christmassy sequence there exist some successive elements, the product of whom is a perfect square.

On a connected graph $G$, one may perform the following operations: [list] [*]choose a vertice $v$, and add a vertice $v'$ such that $v'$ is connected to $v$ and all of its neighbours [*] choose a vertice $v$ with odd degree and delete it [/list] Show that for any connected graph $G$, we may perform a finite number of operations such that the resulting graph is a clique. Proposed by [i]idonthaveanaopsaccount[/i]

Ten students are standing in a line. A teacher wants to place a hat on each student. He has two colors of hats, red and white, and he has $10$ hats of each color. Determine the number of ways in which the teacher can place hats such that among any set of consecutive students, the number of students with red hats and the number of students with blue hats differ by at most $2$

Given a regular $72$-gon. Lenya and Kostya play the game "Make an equilateral triangle." They take turns marking with a pencil on one still unmarked angle of the $72$-gon: Lenya uses red. Kostya uses blue. Lenya starts the game, and the one who marks first wins if its color is three vertices that are the vertices of some equilateral triangle, if all the vertices are marked and no such a triangle exists, the game ends in a draw. Prove that Kostya can play like this so as not to lose.

Let $n\ge 2$ be a given integer. Show that the number of strings of length $n$ consisting of $0'$s and $1'$s such that there are equal number of $00$ and $11$ blocks in each string is equal to \[2\binom{n-2}{\left \lfloor \frac{n-2}{2}\right \rfloor}\]

We are given an infinite deck of cards, each with a real number on it. For every real number $x$, there is exactly one card in the deck that has $x$ written on it. Now two players draw disjoint sets $A$ and $B$ of $100$ cards each from this deck. We would like to define a rule that declares one of them a winner. This rule should satisfy the following conditions: 1. The winner only depends on the relative order of the $200$ cards: if the cards are laid down in increasing order face down and we are told which card belongs to which player, but not what numbers are written on them, we can still decide the winner. 2. If we write the elements of both sets in increasing order as $A =\{ a_1 , a_2 , \ldots, a_{100} \}$ and $B= \{ b_1 , b_2 , \ldots , b_{100} \}$, and $a_i > b_i$ for all $i$, then $A$ beats $B$. 3. If three players draw three disjoint sets $A, B, C$ from the deck, $A$ beats $B$ and $B$ beats $C$ then $A$ also beats $C$. How many ways are there to define such a rule? Here, we consider two rules as different if there exist two sets $A$ and $B$ such that $A$ beats $B$ according to one rule, but $B$ beats $A$ according to the other. [i]Proposed by Ilya Bogdanov, Russia[/i]

A rabbit initially stands at the position $0$, and repeatedly jumps on the real line. In each jump, the rabbit can jump to any position corresponds to an integer but it cannot stand still. Let $N(a)$ be the number of ways to jump with a total distance of $2019$ and stop at the position $a$. Determine all integers $a$ such that $N(a)$ is odd.

Pedro and Juan are playing the following game: $-$ There are $2$ piles of rocks, with $X$ rocks in one pile and $Y$ rocks in the other pile ($X < 12, Y < 11$). $-$ Each player can draw: -- $1$ rock from one of the piles, or -- $2$ rocks from one of the piles, or -- $1$ rock from each pile, or -- $2$ rock from one pile and $1$ from the other pile. Each player must perform one of these four operations in their turns. The looser is the one who takes the last rock. Pedro plays first and has a winning strategy. What are the three maximum possible values of ($X+Y$)?

Determine the number of ten-digit positive integers with the following properties: $\bullet$ Each of the digits $0, 1, 2, . . . , 8$ and $9$ is contained exactly once. $\bullet$ Each digit, except $9$, has a neighbouring digit that is larger than it. (Note. For example, in the number $1230$, the digits $1$ and $3$ are the neighbouring digits of $2$ while $2$ and $0$ are the neighbouring digits of $3$. The digits $1$ and $0$ have only one neighbouring digit.) [i](Karl Czakler)[/i]

Determine all positive integers $n$ for which there exists a set $S$ with the following properties: (i) $S$ consists of $n$ positive integers, all smaller than $2^{n-1}$; (ii) for any two distinct subsets $A$ and $B$ of $S$, the sum of the elements of $A$ is different from the sum of the elements of $B$.

Each square of $1\times 1$, of a $n\times n$ grid is colored using red or blue, in such way that between all the $2\times 2$ subgrids, there are all the possible colorations of a $2\times 2$ grid using red or blue, (colorations that can be obtained by using rotation or symmetry, are said to be different, so there are 16 possibilities). Find: a) The minimum value of $n$. b) For that value, find the least possible number of red squares.