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: 622

Stekel and Prick play a game on an $ m \times n$ board, where $m$ and $n$ are positive are integers. They alternate turns, with Stekel starting. Spine bets on his turn, he always takes a pawn on a square where there is no pawn yet. Prick does his turn the same, but his pawn must always come into a square adjacent to the square that Spike just placed a pawn in on his previous turn. Prick wins like the whole board is full of pawns. Spike wins if Prik can no longer move a pawn on his turn, while there is still at least one empty square on the board. Determine for all pairs $(m, n)$ who has a winning strategy.
Lamija and Faris are playing the following game. Cards, which are numerated from $1$ to $100$, are placed one next to other, starting from $1$ to $100$. Now Faris picks every $7$th card, and after that every card which contains number $7$. After that Lamija picks from remaining cards ones divisible with $5$, and after that cards which contain number $5$. Who will have more cards and how many ? How would game end, if Lamija started with "$5$ rule" and Faris continues with "$7$ rule"?
At the start of a game there are three boxes with $2008, 2009$ and $2010$ game pieces Anja and Bernd play in turns according to the following rule: [i]When it is your turn, select two boxes, empty them and then distribute the pieces from the third box to the three boxes, such that no box may remain empty.If you can no longer complete a turn, you have lost. [/i] Who has a winning strategy when Anja starts?
Players $A$ and $B$ play the following game. Each of them throws a dice, and if the outcomes are $x$ and $y$ respectively, a list of all two digit numbers $10a + b$ with $a,b\in \{1,..,6\}$ and $10a + b \le 10x + y$ is created. Then the players alternately reduce the list by replacing a pair of numbers in the list by their absolute difference, until only one number remains. If the remaining number is of the same parity as the outcome of $A$’s throw, then $A$ is proclaimed the winner. What is the probability that $A$ wins the game?
Five identical empty buckets of $2$-liter capacity stand at the vertices of a regular pentagon. Cinderella and her wicked Stepmother go through a sequence of rounds: At the beginning of every round, the Stepmother takes one liter of water from the nearby river and distributes it arbitrarily over the five buckets. Then Cinderella chooses a pair of neighbouring buckets, empties them to the river and puts them back. Then the next round begins. The Stepmother goal's is to make one of these buckets overflow. Cinderella's goal is to prevent this. Can the wicked Stepmother enforce a bucket overflow? [i]Proposed by Gerhard Woeginger, Netherlands[/i]
Julian and Johan are playing a game with an even number of cards, say $2n$ cards, ($n \in Z_{>0}$). Every card is marked with a positive integer. The cards are shuffled and are arranged in a row, in such a way that the numbers are visible. The two players take turns picking cards. During a turn, a player can pick either the rightmost or the leftmost card. Johan is the first player to pick a card (meaning Julian will have to take the last card). Now, a player’s score is the sum of the numbers on the cards that player acquired during the game. Prove that Johan can always get a score that is at least as high as Julian’s.
Rosa and Sara play with a triangle $ABC$, right at $B$. Rosa begins by marking two interior points of the hypotenuse $AC$, then Sara marks an interior point of the hypotenuse $AC$ different from those of Rosa. Then, from these three points the perpendiculars to the sides $AB$ and $BC$ are drawn, forming the following figure. [img]https://cdn.artofproblemsolving.com/attachments/9/9/c964bbacc4a5960bee170865cc43902410e504.png[/img] Sara wins if the area of the shaded surface is equal to the area of the unshaded surface, in other case wins Rosa. Determine who of the two has a winning strategy.
On a round table, $n$ bowls are arranged in a circle. Anja walks around the table clockwise, placing marbles in the bowls according to the following rule: She places a marble in any first bowl, then goes one bowl further and puts a marble in there. Then she goes two shells before putting another marble, then she goes three shells, etc. If there is at least one marble in each shell, she stops. For which $n$ does this occur?
On a table are given $1999$ red candies and $6661$ yellow candies. The candies are indistinguishable due to the same packing. A gourmet applies the following procedure as long as it is possible: (i) He picks any of the remaining candies, notes its color, eats it and goes to (ii). (ii) He picks any of the remaining candies, and notes its color: if it is the same as the color of the last eaten candy, eats it and goes to (ii); otherwise returns it upon repacking and goes to (i). Prove that all the candies will be eaten and find the probability that the last eaten candy will be red.
Chip and Dale play the following game. Chip starts by splitting $1001$ nuts between three piles, so Dale can see it. In response, Dale chooses some number $N$ from $1$ to $1001$. Then Chip moves nuts from the piles he prepared to a new (fourth) pile until there will be exactly $N$ nuts in any one or more piles. When Chip accomplishes his task, Dale gets an exact amount of nuts that Chip moved. What is the maximal number of nuts that Dale can get for sure, no matter how Chip acts? (Naturally, Dale wants to get as many nuts as possible, while Chip wants to lose as little as possible).
Numbers $1,\frac12,\frac13,\ldots,\frac1{2001}$ are written on a blackboard. A student erases two numbers $x,y$ and writes down the number $x+y+xy$ instead. Determine the number that will be written on the board after $2000$ such operations.
There are $c$ red, $p$ blue, and $b$ white balls on a table. Two players $A$ and $B$ play a game by alternately making moves. In every move, a player takes two or three balls from the table. Player $A$ begins. A player wins if after his/her move at least one of the three colors no longer exists among the balls remaining on the table. For which values of $c,p,b$ does player $A$ have a winning strategy?
On a table there are $1999$ counters, red on one side and black on the other side, arranged arbitrarily. Two people alternately make moves, where each move is of one of the following two types: (1) Remove several counters which all have the same color up; (2) Reverse several counters which all have the same color up. The player who takes the last counter wins. Decide which of the two players (the one playing first or the other one) has a wining strategy.
In a circle there are $2019$ plates, on each lies one cake. Petya and Vasya are playing a game. In one move, Petya points at a cake and calls number from $1$ to $16$, and Vasya moves the specified cake to the specified number of check clockwise or counterclockwise (Vasya chooses the direction each time). Petya wants at least some $k$ pastries to accumulate on one of the plates and Vasya wants to stop him. What is the largest $k$ Petya can succeed?
Given a cube, a cubic box, that exactly suits for the cube, and six colours. First man paints each side of the cube with its (side's) unique colour. Another man does the same with the box. Prove that the third man can put the cube in the box in such a way, that every cube side will touch the box side of different colour.
On competition which has $16$ teams, it is played $55$ games. Prove that among them exists $3$ teams such that they have not played any matches between themselves.
An ordered quadruple of numbers is called [i]ten-esque[/i] if it is composed of 4 nonnegative integers whose sum is equal to $10$. Ana chooses a ten-esque quadruple $(a_1, a_2, a_3, a_4)$ and Banana tries to guess it. At each stage Banana offers a ten-esque quadtruple $(x_1,x_2,x_3,x_4)$ and Ana tells her the value of \[|a_1-x_1|+|a_2-x_2|+|a_3-x_3|+|a_4-x_4|\] How many guesses are needed for Banana to figure out the quadruple Ana chose?
Peter buys a lottery ticket on which he enters an $n$-digit number, none of the digits being $0$. On the draw date, the lottery administrators will reveal an $n\times n$ table, each cell containing one of the digits from $1$ to $9$. A ticket wins a prize if it does not match any row or column of this table, read in either direction. Peter wants to bribe the administrators to reveal the digits on some cells chosen by Peter, so that Peter can guarantee to have a winning ticket. What is the minimum number of digits Peter has to know?
Five men play several sets of dominoes (two against two) so that each player has each other player once as a partner and two times as an opponent. Find the number of sets and all ways to arrange the players.
The numbers $1, 2,..., 2020$ are written on the blackboard. Venus and Serena play the following game. First, Venus connects by a line segment two numbers such that one of them divides the other. Then Serena connects by a line segment two numbers which has not been connected and such that one of them divides the other. Then Venus again and they continue until there is a triangle with one vertex in $2020$, i.e. $2020$ is connected to two numbers that are connected with each other. The girl that has drawn the last line segment (completed the triangle) is the winner. Which of the girls has a winning strategy? (Tomáš Bárta, Czech Republic)
Two players $A$ and $B$ take turns taking stones from a pile of $N$ stones. They play in the order $A$, $B$, $A$, $B$, $A$, $....$, $A$ starts the game and the one who takes out the last stone loses.$ B$ can serve on each play $1$, $2$ or 3 stones, while$ A$ can draw $2, 3, 4$ stones or $1$ stone in each turn f it is the last one in the pile. Determine for what values of $N$ does $A$ have a winning strategy, and for what values the winning strategy is $B$'s.
Players $A$ and $B$ play a "paintful" game on the real line. Player $A$ has a pot of paint with four units of black ink. A quantity $p$ of this ink suffices to blacken a (closed) real interval of length $p$. In every round, player $A$ picks some positive integer $m$ and provides $1/2^m $ units of ink from the pot. Player $B$ then picks an integer $k$ and blackens the interval from $k/2^m$ to $(k+1)/2^m$ (some parts of this interval may have been blackened before). The goal of player $A$ is to reach a situation where the pot is empty and the interval $[0,1]$ is not completely blackened. Decide whether there exists a strategy for player $A$ to win in a finite number of moves.
There are more than $n^2$ stones on the table. Peter and Vasya play a game, Peter starts. Each turn, a player can take any prime number less than $n$ stones, or any multiple of $n$ stones, or $1$ stone. Prove that Peter always can take the last stone (regardless of Vasya's strategy). [i]S Berlov[/i]
Let $m$ and $n$ be fixed positive integers. Tsvety and Freyja play a game on an infinite grid of unit square cells. Tsvety has secretly written a real number inside of each cell so that the sum of the numbers within every rectangle of size either $m$ by $n$ or $n$ by $m$ is zero. Freyja wants to learn all of these numbers. One by one, Freyja asks Tsvety about some cell in the grid, and Tsvety truthfully reveals what number is written in it. Freyja wins if, at any point, Freyja can simultaneously deduce the number written in every cell of the entire infinite grid (If this never occurs, Freyja has lost the game and Tsvety wins). In terms of $m$ and $n$, find the smallest number of questions that Freyja must ask to win, or show that no finite number of questions suffice. [i]Nikolai Beluhov[/i]
At a table tennis tournament, each one of the $ n\ge 2 $ participants play with all the others exactly once. Show that, at the end of the tournament, one and only one of these propositions will be true: $ \text{(1)} $ The players can be labeled with the numbers $ 1,2,...,n, $ such that $ 1 $ won $ 2, 2 $ won $ 3,...,n-1 $ won $ n $ and $ n $ won $ 1. $ $ \text{(2)} $ The players can be partitioned in two nonempty subsets $ A,B, $ such that whichever one from $ A $ won all that are in $ B. $