Given is a positive integer $n \geq 2$ and three pairwise disjoint sets $A, B, C$, each of $n$ distinct real numbers. Denote by $a$ the number of triples $(x, y, z) \in A \times B \times C$ satisfying $x<y<z$ and let $b$ denote the number of triples $(x, y, z) \in A \times B \times C$ such that $x>y>z$. Prove that $n$ divides $a-b$.

There is a board with $2010$ rows and $2001$ columns, on it there is a token located in the upper left box that can perform one of the following operations: (A) Walk 3 steps horizontally or vertically. (B) Walk 2 steps to the right and 3 steps down. (C) Walk 2 steps to the left and 2 steps up. With the condition that immediately after carrying out an operation on (B) or (C) it is mandatory to take a step to the right before perform the following operation. It is possible to exit the board, so count the number of steps necessary, entering through the other end of the row or column from which it exits, as if the board outside circular (example: from the beginning you can walk to the square located in row $1$ and column $1999$). Will it be possible that after $2011$ operations allowed the checker to land exactly on the bottom square right?

A student read the book with $480$ pages two times. If he in the second time for every day read $16$ pages more than in the first time and he finished it $5$ days earlier than in the first time. For how many days did he read the book in the first time?

There are a total of $n$ boys and girls sitting in a big circle. Now, Dave wants to walk around the circle. For a start point, if at any time, one of the following two conditions holds: 1. he doesn't see any girl 2. the number of boys he saw $\ge$ the number of girls he saw $+k$ Then we say this point is [i]good[/i]. What is the maximum of $r$ with the property that there is at least one good point whenever the number of girls is $r$?

You are somewhere on a ladder with $5$ rungs. You have a fair coin and an envelope that contains either a double-headed coin or a double-tailed coin, each with probability $1/2$. Every minute you flip a coin. If it lands heads you go up a rung, if it lands tails you go down a rung. If you move up from the top rung you win, if you move down from the bottom rung you lose. You can open the envelope at any time, but if you do then you must immediately flip that coin once, after which you can use it or the fair coin whenever you want. What is the best strategy (i.e. on what rung(s) should you open the envelope)?

A Magician has a deck of $52$ cards. Spectators want to know the order of cards in the deck(without specifying face-up or face-down). They are allowed to ask the questions “How many cards are there between such-and-such card and such-and-such card?” One of the spectators knows the card order. Find the minimal number of questions he needs to ask to be sure that the other spectators can learn the card order. (9)

Eva draws an equilateral triangle and its altitudes. In a first step she draws the center triangle of the equilateral triangle, in a second step the center triangle of this center triangle and so on. After each step Eva counts all triangles whose sides lie completely on drawn lines. What is the minimum number of center triangles she must have drawn so that the figure contains more than 2022 such triangles?

A stick of length $10$ is marked with $9$ evenly spaced marks (so each is one unit apart). An ant is placed at every mark and at the endpoints, randomly facing either right or left. Suddenly, all the ants start walking simultaneously at a rate of $ 1$ unit per second. If two ants collide head-on, they immediately reverse direction (assume that turning takes no time). Ants fall off the stick as soon as they walk past the endpoints (so the two on the end don’t fall off immediately unless they are facing outwards). On average, how long (in seconds) will it take until all of the ants fall off of the stick?

$101$ people, sitting at a round table in any order, had $1,2,... , 101$ cards, respectively. A transfer is someone give one card to one of the two people adjacent to him. Find the smallest positive integer $k$ such that there always can through no more than $ k $ times transfer, each person hold cards of the same number, regardless of the sitting order.

Let $M=\{1,2,\cdots,n\}$, each element of $M$ is colored in either red, blue or yellow. Set $A=\{(x,y,z)\in M\times M\times M|x+y+z\equiv 0\mod n$, $x,y,z$ are of same color$\},$ $B=\{(x,y,z)\in M\times M\times M|x+y+z\equiv 0\mod n,$ $x,y,z$ are of pairwise distinct color$\}.$ Prove that $2|A|\geq |B|$.

What is the minimum number of cells that can be painted black in white square $300 \times 300$ so that no three black cells form a corner, and after painting any white cell this condition was it violated?

Let $n$ be a positive integer. Mariano divides a rectangle into $n^2$ smaller rectangles by drawing $n-1$ vertical lines and $n-1$ horizontal lines, parallel to the sides of the larger rectangle. On every step, Emilio picks one of the smaller rectangles and Mariano tells him its area. Find the least positive integer $k$ for which it is possible that Emilio can do $k$ conveniently thought steps in such a way that with the received information, he can determine the area of each one of the $n^2$ smaller rectangles.

In the plane there are two disjoint sets $ A $ and $ B $, each of which consists of $ n $ points, and no three points of the set $ A \cup B $ lie on one straight line. Prove that there is a set of $ n $ disjoint closed segments, each of which has one end in the set $ A $ and the other in the set $ B $.

Prove that in the set $ \{1,2, \ldots, 1989\}$ can be expressed as the disjoint union of subsets $ A_i, \{i \equal{} 1,2, \ldots, 117\}$ such that [b]i.)[/b] each $ A_i$ contains 17 elements [b]ii.)[/b] the sum of all the elements in each $ A_i$ is the same.

Consider a checkered $3m\times 3m$ square, where $m$ is an integer greater than $1.$ A frog sits on the lower left corner cell $S$ and wants to get to the upper right corner cell $F.$ The frog can hop from any cell to either the next cell to the right or the next cell upwards. Some cells can be [i]sticky[/i], and the frog gets trapped once it hops on such a cell. A set $X$ of cells is called [i]blocking[/i] if the frog cannot reach $F$ from $S$ when all the cells of $X$ are sticky. A blocking set is [i] minimal[/i] if it does not contain a smaller blocking set.[list=a][*]Prove that there exists a minimal blocking set containing at least $3m^2-3m$ cells. [*]Prove that every minimal blocking set containing at most $3m^2$ cells.

[b]p1.[/b] If $x + z = v$, $w + z = 2v$, $z - w = 2y$, and $y \ne 0$, compute the value of $$\left(x + y +\frac{x}{y} \right)^{101}.$$ [b]p2. [/b]Every minute, a snail picks one cardinal direction (either north, south, east, or west) with equal probability and moves one inch in that direction. What is the probability that after four minutes the snail is more than three inches away from where it started? [b]p3.[/b] What is the probability that a point chosen randomly from the interior of a cube is closer to the cube’s center than it is to any of the cube’s eight vertices? [b]p4.[/b] Let $ABCD$ be a rectangle where $AB = 4$ and $BC = 3$. Inscribe circles within triangles $ABC$ and $ACD$. What is the distance between the centers of these two circles? [b]p5.[/b] $C$ is a circle centered at the origin that is tangent to the line $x - y\sqrt3 = 4$. Find the radius of $C$. [b]p6.[/b] I have a fair $100$-sided die that has the numbers $ 1$ through $100$ on its sides. What is the probability that if I roll this die three times that the number on the first roll will be greater than or equal to the sum of the two numbers on the second and third rolls? [b]p7. [/b] List all solutions $(x, y, z)$ of the following system of equations with x, y, and z positive real numbers: $$x^2 + y^2 = 16$$ $$x^2 + z^2 = 4 + xz$$ $$y^2 + z^2 = 4 + yz\sqrt3$$ [b]p8.[/b] $A_1A_2A_3A_4A_5A_6A_7$ is a regular heptagon ($7$ sided-figure) centered at the origin where $A_1 = (\sqrt[91]{6}, 0)$. $B_1B_2B_3... B_{13}$ is a regular triskaidecagon ($13$ sided-figure) centered at the origin where $B_1 =(0,\sqrt[91]{41})$. Compute the product of all lengths $A_iB_j$ , where $i$ ranges between $1$ and $7$, inclusive, and $j$ ranges between $1$ and $13$, inclusive. [b]p9.[/b] How many three-digit integers are there such that one digit of the integer is exactly two times a digit of the integer that is in a different place than the first? (For example, $100$, $122$, and $124$ should be included in the count, but $42$ and $130$ should not.) [b]p10.[/b] Let $\alpha$ and $\beta$ be the solutions of the quadratic equation $$x^2 - 1154x + 1 = 0.$$ Find $\sqrt[4]{\alpha}+\sqrt[4]{\beta}$. PS. You should use hide for answers. Collected [url=https://artofproblemsolving.com/community/c5h2760506p24143309]here[/url].

Five people form several commissions to prepare a competition. Here any commission must be nonempty and any two commissions cannot contain the same members. Moreover, any two commissions have at least one common member. There are already $14$ commissions. Prove that at least one additional commission can be formed.

Baklavas with nuts are laid out on the table in a row at the Nowruz celebration. Kosa and Kechel saw this and decided to play a game. Kosa eats one baklava from either the beginning or the end of the row in each move. Kechel either doesn't touch anything in each move or chooses the baklava he wants and just eats the nut on it. They agree that the first Kosa will start the game and make $20$ moves in each step, and the Kechel will only make $1$ move in each step. If the last baklava eaten by the Kosa is a nut, he wins the game. It is given that the number of baklavas is a multiple of $20.$ $A)$ If the number of baklavas is $400,$ prove that Kosa will win the game regardless of which strategy Kechel chooses. $B)$ Is it always true that no matter how many baklavas there are and what strategy Kechel chooses, Kosa will always win the game?

There is a pack of 27 distinct cards, and each card has three values on it. The first value is a shape from $\{\Delta,\square,\odot\}$; the second value is a letter from $\{A,B,C\}$; and the third value is a number from $\{1,2,3\}$. In how many ways can we choose an unordered set of 3 cards from the pack, so that no two of the chosen cards have two matching values. For example we can chose $\{\Delta A1,\Delta B2,\odot C3\}$ But we cannot choose $\{\Delta A1,\square B2,\Delta C1\}$

Given is a board $n \times n$ and in every square there is a checker. In one move, every checker simultaneously goes to an adjacent square (two squares are adjacent if they share a common side). In one square there can be multiple checkers. Find the minimum and the maximum number of covered cells for $n=5, 6, 7$.

Two teams, $ A$ and $ B$, fight for a territory limited by a circumference. $ A$ has $ n$ blue flags and $ B$ has $ n$ white flags ($ n\geq 2$, fixed). They play alternatively and $ A$ begins the game. Each team, in its turn, places one of his flags in a point of the circumference that has not been used in a previous play. Each flag, once placed, cannot be moved. Once all $ 2n$ flags have been placed, territory is divided between the two teams. A point of the territory belongs to $ A$ if the closest flag to it is blue, and it belongs to $ B$ if the closest flag to it is white. If the closest blue flag to a point is at the same distance than the closest white flag to that point, the point is neutral (not from $ A$ nor from $ B$). A team wins the game is their points cover a greater area that that covered by the points of the other team. There is a draw if both cover equal areas. Prove that, for every $ n$, team $ B$ has a winning strategy.

Let $N\ge2$ be a fixed positive integer. There are $2N$ people, numbered $1,2,...,2N$, participating in a tennis tournament. For any two positive integers $i,j$ with $1\le i<j\le 2N$, player $i$ has a higher skill level than player $j$. Prior to the first round, the players are paired arbitrarily and each pair is assigned a unique court among $N$ courts, numbered $1,2,...,N$. During a round, each player plays against the other person assigned to his court (so that exactly one match takes place per court), and the player with higher skill wins the match (in other words, there are no upsets). Afterwards, for $i=2,3,...,N$, the winner of court $i$ moves to court $i-1$ and the loser of court $i$ stays on court $i$; however, the winner of court 1 stays on court 1 and the loser of court 1 moves to court $N$. Find all positive integers $M$ such that, regardless of the initial pairing, the players $2, 3, \ldots, N+1$ all change courts immediately after the $M$th round. [i]Proposed by Ray Li[/i]

Find the maximum number of cells that can be coloured from a $4\times 3000$ board such that no tetromino is formed. [i]Proposed by Arian Zamani, Matin Yousefi[/i] [b]Rated 5[/b]

Find all natural numbers $n$ for which there is a permutation $\sigma$ of $\{1,2,\ldots, n\}$ that satisfies: \[ \sum_{i=1}^n \sigma(i)(-2)^{i-1}=0 \]

Consider $n$ segments in the plane which no two intersect and between their $2n$ endpoints no three are collinear. Is the following statement true? Statement: There exists a simple $2n$-gon such that it's vertices are the $2n$ endpoints of the segments and each segment is either completely inside the polygon or an edge of the polygon.