(a) Two people perform a card trick. The first performer takes $5$ cards from a $52$-card deck (previously shuffled by a member of the audience) , looks at them, and arranges them in a row from left to right: one face down (not necessarily the first one) , the others face up . The second performer guesses correctly the card which is face down. Prove that the performers can agree on a system which always makes this possible. (b) For their second trick, the first performer arranges four cards in a row, face up, the fifth card is kept hidden. Can they still agree on a system which enables the second performer to correctly guess the hidden card? (G Galperin)

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.

Let $n$ be a positive integer. Two players $A$ and $B$ play a game in which they take turns choosing positive integers $k \le n$. The rules of the game are: (i) A player cannot choose a number that has been chosen by either player on any previous turn. (ii) A player cannot choose a number consecutive to any of those the player has already chosen on any previous turn. (iii) The game is a draw if all numbers have been chosen; otherwise the player who cannot choose a number anymore loses the game. The player $A$ takes the first turn. Determine the outcome of the game, assuming that both players use optimal strategies. [i]Proposed by Finland[/i]

On the board are written the natural numbers from $1$ to $2001$ inclusive. You have to delete some numbers so that among those that remain undeleted it is impossible to choose two different numbers such that the result of their multiplication is equal to one of the numbers that remain undeleted. What is the minimum number of numbers that must be deleted? For that amount, present an example showing which numbers are erased. Justify why, if fewer numbers are deleted, the desired property is not obtained.

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]

All the cells of a $10\times10$ board are colored white initially. Two players are playing a game with alternating moves. A move consists of coloring any un-colored cell black. A player is considered to loose, if after his move no white domino is left. Which of the players has a winning strategy? [I]Proposed by A. Khrabrov[/i]

The maze is an $8 \times 8 $square, each cell contains $1 \times 1$ which has one of four arrows drawn (up, down, right, left). The upper side of the upper right cell is the exit from the maze.In the lower left cell there is a chip that, with each move, moves one square in the direction indicated by the arrow. After each move, the shooter in the cell in which there was just a chip rotates $90^o$ clockwise. If a chip must move, taking it outside the $8 \times 8$ square, it remains in place, and the arrow also rotates $90^o$ clockwise. Prove that sooner or later, the chip will come out of the maze.

Alice and Bob play the following game. To start, Alice arranges the numbers $1,2,\ldots,n$ in some order in a row and then Bob chooses one of the numbers and places a pebble on it. A player's [i]turn[/i] consists of picking up and placing the pebble on an adjacent number under the restriction that the pebble can be placed on the number $k$ at most $k$ times. The two players alternate taking turns beginning with Alice. The first player who cannot make a move loses. For each positive integer $n$, determine who has a winning strategy.

Alice and Bob play the following game. They write some fractions of the form $1/n$, where $n{}$ is positive integer, onto the blackboard. The first move is made by Alice. Alice writes only one fraction in each her turn and Bob writes one fraction in his first turn, two fractions in his second turn, three fractions in his third turn and so on. Bob wants to make the sum of all the fractions on the board to be an integer number after some turn. Can Alice prevent this? [i]Andrey Arzhantsev[/i]

Two teams $A$ and $B$ play a school ping pong tournament. The team $A$ consists of $m$ students, and the team $B$ consists of $n$ students where $m \ne n$. There is only one ping pong table to play and the tournament is organized as follows: Two students from different teams start to play while other players form a line waiting for their turn to play. After each game the first player in the line replaces the member of the same team at the table and plays with the remaining player. The replaced player then goes to the end of the line. Prove that every two players from the opposite teams will eventually play against each other.

Nico picks $13$ pairwise distinct $3-$digit positive integers. Ian then selects several of these 13 numbers, the ones he wants, and using only once each selected number and some of the operations addition, subtraction, multiplication and division ($+,-,\times ,:$) must get an expression whose value is greater than $3$ and less than $4$. If he succeeds, Ian wins; otherwise, Nico wins. Which of the two has a winning strategy?

In a box there are $31$, $41$ and $59$ stones coloured, respectively, red, green and blue. Three players, having t-shirts of these three colours, play the following game. They sequentially make one of two moves: (I) either remove three stones of one colour from the box, (II) or replace two stones of different colours by two stones of the third colour. The game ends when all the stones in the box have the same colour and the winner is the player whose t-shirt has this colour. Assuming that the players play optimally, is it possible to decide whether the game ends and who will win, depending on who the starting player is?

A row of 2021 balls is given. Pasha and Vova play a game, taking turns to perform moves; Pasha begins. On each turn a boy should paint a non-painted ball in one of the three available colors: red, yellow, or green (initially all balls are non-painted). When all the balls are colored, Pasha wins, if there are three consecutive balls of different colors; otherwise Vova wins. Who has a winning strategy?

Given a positive integer $k$ and other two integers $b > w > 1.$ There are two strings of pearls, a string of $b$ black pearls and a string of $w$ white pearls. The length of a string is the number of pearls on it. One cuts these strings in some steps by the following rules. In each step: [b](i)[/b] The strings are ordered by their lengths in a non-increasing order. If there are some strings of equal lengths, then the white ones precede the black ones. Then $k$ first ones (if they consist of more than one pearl) are chosen; if there are less than $k$ strings longer than 1, then one chooses all of them. [b](ii)[/b] Next, one cuts each chosen string into two parts differing in length by at most one. (For instance, if there are strings of $5, 4, 4, 2$ black pearls, strings of $8, 4, 3$ white pearls and $k = 4,$ then the strings of 8 white, 5 black, 4 white and 4 black pearls are cut into the parts $(4,4), (3,2), (2,2)$ and $(2,2)$ respectively.) The process stops immediately after the step when a first isolated white pearl appears. Prove that at this stage, there will still exist a string of at least two black pearls. [i]Proposed by Bill Sands, Thao Do, Canada[/i]

Chip and Dale play on a $100 \times 100$ table. In the beginning, a chess king stands in the upper left corner of the table. At each move the king is moved one square right, down or right-down diagonally. A player cannot move in the direction used by his opponent in the previous move. The players move in turn, Chip begins. The player that cannot move loses. Which player has a winning strategy?

Gleb picked positive integers $N$ and $a$ ($a < N$). He wrote the number $a$ on a blackboard. Then each turn he did the following: he took the last number on the blackboard, divided the number $N$ by this last number with remainder and wrote the remainder onto the board. When he wrote the number $0$ onto the board, he stopped. Could he pick $N$ and $a$ such that the sum of the numbers on the blackboard would become greater than $100N$ ? Ivan Mitrofanov

There is a row of $100N$ sandwiches with ham. A boy and his cat play a game. In one action the boy eats the first sandwich from any end of the row. In one action the cat either eats the ham from one sandwich or does nothing. The boy performs 100 actions in each of his turns, and the cat makes only 1 action each turn; the boy starts first. The boy wins if the last sandwich he eats contains ham. Is it true that he can win for any positive integer $N{}$ no matter how the cat plays? [i]Ivan Mitrofanov[/i]

(a) On each square of a squared sheet of paper of size $20 \times 20$ there is a soldier. Vanya chooses a number $d$ and Petya moves the soldiers to new squares in such a way that each soldier is moved through a distance of at least $d$ (the distance being measured between the centres of the initial and the new squares) and each square is occupied by exactly one soldier. For which $d$ is this possible? (Give the maximum possible $d$, prove that it is possible to move the soldiers through distances not less than $d$ and prove that there is no greater $d$ for which this procedure may be carried out.) (b) Answer the same question as (a), but with a sheet of size $21 \times 21$. (SS Krotov, Moscow)

Chris and Michael play a game on a board which is a rhombus of side length $n$ (a positive integer) consisting of two equilateral triangles, each of which has been divided into equilateral triangles of side length $ 1$. Each has a single token, initially on the leftmost and rightmost squares of the board, called the “home” squares (the illustration shows the case $n = 4$). [img]https://cdn.artofproblemsolving.com/attachments/e/b/8135203c22ce77c03c144850099ad1c575edb8.png[/img] A move consists of moving your token to an adjacent triangle (two triangles are adjacent only if they share a side). To win the game, you must either capture your opponent’s token (by moving to the triangle it occupies), or move on to your opponent’s home square. Supposing that Chris moves first, which, if any, player has a winning strategy?

Ana and Luca play the following game. Ana writes a list of $n$ different integer numbers. Luca wins if he can choose four different numbers, $a, b, c$ and $d$, so that the number $a+b-(c+d)$ is multiple of $20$. Determine the minimum value of $n$ for which, whatever Ana's list, Luca can win.

Let $n$ be a positive integer. Two players $A$ and $B$ play a game in which they take turns choosing positive integers $k \le n$. The rules of the game are: (i) A player cannot choose a number that has been chosen by either player on any previous turn. (ii) A player cannot choose a number consecutive to any of those the player has already chosen on any previous turn. (iii) The game is a draw if all numbers have been chosen; otherwise the player who cannot choose a number anymore loses the game. The player $A$ takes the first turn. Determine the outcome of the game, assuming that both players use optimal strategies. [i]Proposed by Finland[/i]

Two players, \(A\) (first player) and \(B\), take alternate turns in playing a game using 2016 chips as follows: [i]the player whose turn it is, must remove \(s\) chips from the remaining pile of chips, where \(s \in \{ 2,4,5 \}\)[/i]. No one can skip a turn. The player who at some point is unable to make a move (cannot remove chips from the pile) loses the game. Who among the two players can force a win on this game?

Axel and Berta play the following games: On a board are a number of positive integers. One move consists of a player exchanging a number $x$ on the board for two positive integers y and $z$ (not necessarily different), such that $y + z = x$. The game ends when the numbers on the board are relatively coprime in pairs. The player who made the last move has then lost the game. At the beginning of the game, only the number $2015$ is on the board. The two players make do their moves in turn and Berta begins. One of the players has a winning strategy. Who, and why?

On her blackboard, Alice has written $n$ integers strictly greater than $1$. Then, she can, as often as she likes, erase two numbers $a$ and $b$ such that $a \neq b$, and replace them with $q$ and $q^2$, where $q$ is the product of the prime factors of $ab$ (each prime factor is counted only once). For instance, if Alice erases the numbers $4$ and $6$, the prime factors of $ab = 2^3 \times 3$ and $2$ and $3$, and Alice writes $q = 6$ and $q^2 =36$. Prove that, after some time, and whatever Alice's strategy is, the list of numbers written on the blackboard will never change anymore. [i]Note: The order of the numbers of the list is not important.[/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.