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

Tags were heavily modified to better represent problems.

AND:
OR:
NO:

Found problems: 181

2006 Germany Team Selection Test, 1

Let $n\geq 3$ be a fixed integer. Each side and each diagonal of a regular $n$-gon is labelled with a number from the set $\left\{1;\;2;\;...;\;r\right\}$ in a way such that the following two conditions are fulfilled: [b]1.[/b] Each number from the set $\left\{1;\;2;\;...;\;r\right\}$ occurs at least once as a label. [b]2.[/b] In each triangle formed by three vertices of the $n$-gon, two of the sides are labelled with the same number, and this number is greater than the label of the third side. [b](a)[/b] Find the maximal $r$ for which such a labelling is possible. [b](b)[/b] [i]Harder version (IMO Shortlist 2005):[/i] For this maximal value of $r$, how many such labellings are there? [hide="Easier version (5th German TST 2006) - contains answer to the harder version"] [i]Easier version (5th German TST 2006):[/i] Show that, for this maximal value of $r$, there are exactly $\frac{n!\left(n-1\right)!}{2^{n-1}}$ possible labellings.[/hide] [i]Proposed by Federico Ardila, Colombia[/i]

1999 IMO Shortlist, 5

Let $n$ be an even positive integer. We say that two different cells of a $n \times n$ board are [b]neighboring[/b] if they have a common side. Find the minimal number of cells on the $n \times n$ board that must be marked so that any cell (marked or not marked) has a marked neighboring cell.

1992 IMO Longlists, 20

Let $X$ and $Y$ be two sets of points in the plane and $M$ be a set of segments connecting points from $X$ and $Y$ . Let $k$ be a natural number. Prove that the segments from $M$ can be painted using $k$ colors in such a way that for any point $x \in X \cup Y$ and two colors $\alpha$ and $\beta$ $(\alpha \neq \beta)$, the difference between the number of $\alpha$-colored segments and the number of $\beta$-colored segments originating in $X$ is less than or equal to $1$.

2001 USAMO, 1

Each of eight boxes contains six balls. Each ball has been colored with one of $n$ colors, such that no two balls in the same box are the same color, and no two colors occur together in more than one box. Determine, with justification, the smallest integer $n$ for which this is possible.

1978 IMO Shortlist, 10

An international society has its members from six different countries. The list of members contain $1978$ names, numbered $1, 2, \dots, 1978$. Prove that there is at least one member whose number is the sum of the numbers of two members from his own country, or twice as large as the number of one member from his own country.

2008 Brazil Team Selection Test, 4

Given is a convex polygon $ P$ with $ n$ vertices. Triangle whose vertices lie on vertices of $ P$ is called [i]good [/i] if all its sides are unit length. Prove that there are at most $ \frac {2n}{3}$ [i]good[/i] triangles. [i]Author: Vyacheslav Yasinskiy, Ukraine[/i]

1978 IMO, 3

An international society has its members from six different countries. The list of members contain $1978$ names, numbered $1, 2, \dots, 1978$. Prove that there is at least one member whose number is the sum of the numbers of two members from his own country, or twice as large as the number of one member from his own country.

2012 ELMO Shortlist, 3

Let $s(k)$ be the number of ways to express $k$ as the sum of distinct $2012^{th}$ powers, where order does not matter. Show that for every real number $c$ there exists an integer $n$ such that $s(n)>cn$. [i]Alex Zhu.[/i]

2018 Brazil Team Selection Test, 2

Let $n$ be a positive integer. Define a chameleon to be any sequence of $3n$ letters, with exactly $n$ occurrences of each of the letters $a, b,$ and $c$. Define a swap to be the transposition of two adjacent letters in a chameleon. Prove that for any chameleon $X$ , there exists a chameleon $Y$ such that $X$ cannot be changed to $Y$ using fewer than $3n^2/2$ swaps.

1987 IMO Shortlist, 17

Prove that there exists a four-coloring of the set $M = \{1, 2, \cdots, 1987\}$ such that any arithmetic progression with $10$ terms in the set $M$ is not monochromatic. [b][i]Alternative formulation[/i][/b] Let $M = \{1, 2, \cdots, 1987\}$. Prove that there is a function $f : M \to \{1, 2, 3, 4\}$ that is not constant on every set of $10$ terms from $M$ that form an arithmetic progression. [i]Proposed by Romania[/i]

2016 Indonesia TST, 3

Let $\{E_1, E_2, \dots, E_m\}$ be a collection of sets such that $E_i \subseteq X = \{1, 2, \dots, 100\}$, $E_i \neq X$, $i = 1, 2, \dots, m$. It is known that every two elements of $X$ is contained together in exactly one $E_i$ for some $i$. Determine the minimum value of $m$.

2012 IMO Shortlist, C3

In a $999 \times 999$ square table some cells are white and the remaining ones are red. Let $T$ be the number of triples $(C_1,C_2,C_3)$ of cells, the first two in the same row and the last two in the same column, with $C_1,C_3$ white and $C_2$ red. Find the maximum value $T$ can attain. [i]Proposed by Merlijn Staps, The Netherlands[/i]

2009 Germany Team Selection Test, 1

In the plane we consider rectangles whose sides are parallel to the coordinate axes and have positive length. Such a rectangle will be called a [i]box[/i]. Two boxes [i]intersect[/i] if they have a common point in their interior or on their boundary. Find the largest $ n$ for which there exist $ n$ boxes $ B_1$, $ \ldots$, $ B_n$ such that $ B_i$ and $ B_j$ intersect if and only if $ i\not\equiv j\pm 1\pmod n$. [i]Proposed by Gerhard Woeginger, Netherlands[/i]

1966 IMO Shortlist, 45

An alphabet consists of $n$ letters. What is the maximal length of a word if we know that any two consecutive letters $a,b$ of the word are different and that the word cannot be reduced to a word of the kind $abab$ with $a\neq b$ by removing letters.

1987 IMO Shortlist, 11

Find the number of partitions of the set $\{1, 2, \cdots, n\}$ into three subsets $A_1,A_2,A_3$, some of which may be empty, such that the following conditions are satisfied: $(i)$ After the elements of every subset have been put in ascending order, every two consecutive elements of any subset have different parity. $(ii)$ If $A_1,A_2,A_3$ are all nonempty, then in exactly one of them the minimal number is even . [i]Proposed by Poland.[/i]

1997 Nordic, 1

Let $A$ be a set of seven positive numbers. Determine the maximal number of triples $(x, y, z)$ of elements of $A$ satisfying $x < y$ and $x + y = z$.

2019 European Mathematical Cup, 2

Let $n$ be a positive integer. An $n\times n$ board consisting of $n^2$ cells, each being a unit square colored either black or white, is called [i]convex[/i] if for every black colored cell, both the cell directly to the left of it and the cell directly above it are also colored black. We define the [i]beauty[/i] of a board as the number of pairs of its cells $(u,v)$ such that $u$ is black, $v$ is white, and $u$ and $v$ are in the same row or column. Determine the maximum possible beauty of a convex $n\times n$ board. [i]Proposed by Ivan Novak[/i]

2012 ELMO Shortlist, 3

Let $s(k)$ be the number of ways to express $k$ as the sum of distinct $2012^{th}$ powers, where order does not matter. Show that for every real number $c$ there exists an integer $n$ such that $s(n)>cn$. [i]Alex Zhu.[/i]

2012 IMO Shortlist, C2

Let $n \geq 1$ be an integer. What is the maximum number of disjoint pairs of elements of the set $\{ 1,2,\ldots , n \}$ such that the sums of the different pairs are different integers not exceeding $n$?

1967 IMO Shortlist, 4

A subset $S$ of the set of integers 0 - 99 is said to have property $A$ if it is impossible to fill a crossword-puzzle with 2 rows and 2 columns with numbers in $S$ (0 is written as 00, 1 as 01, and so on). Determine the maximal number of elements in the set $S$ with the property $A.$

2017 IMO Shortlist, C2

Let $n$ be a positive integer. Define a chameleon to be any sequence of $3n$ letters, with exactly $n$ occurrences of each of the letters $a, b,$ and $c$. Define a swap to be the transposition of two adjacent letters in a chameleon. Prove that for any chameleon $X$ , there exists a chameleon $Y$ such that $X$ cannot be changed to $Y$ using fewer than $3n^2/2$ swaps.

1992 IMO Longlists, 10

Consider $9$ points in space, no four of which are coplanar. Each pair of points is joined by an edge (that is, a line segment) and each edge is either colored blue or red or left uncolored. Find the smallest value of $\,n\,$ such that whenever exactly $\,n\,$ edges are colored, the set of colored edges necessarily contains a triangle all of whose edges have the same color.

2005 Germany Team Selection Test, 3

For an ${n\times n}$ matrix $A$, let $X_{i}$ be the set of entries in row $i$, and $Y_{j}$ the set of entries in column $j$, ${1\leq i,j\leq n}$. We say that $A$ is [i]golden[/i] if ${X_{1},\dots ,X_{n},Y_{1},\dots ,Y_{n}}$ are distinct sets. Find the least integer $n$ such that there exists a ${2004\times 2004}$ golden matrix with entries in the set ${\{1,2,\dots ,n\}}$.

2016 EGMO, 3

Let $m$ be a positive integer. Consider a $4m\times 4m$ array of square unit cells. Two different cells are [i]related[/i] to each other if they are in either the same row or in the same column. No cell is related to itself. Some cells are colored blue, such that every cell is related to at least two blue cells. Determine the minimum number of blue cells.

1992 IMO Shortlist, 4

Consider $9$ points in space, no four of which are coplanar. Each pair of points is joined by an edge (that is, a line segment) and each edge is either colored blue or red or left uncolored. Find the smallest value of $\,n\,$ such that whenever exactly $\,n\,$ edges are colored, the set of colored edges necessarily contains a triangle all of whose edges have the same color.