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

1994 IMO Shortlist, 1

Two players play alternately on a $ 5 \times 5$ board. The first player always enters a $ 1$ into an empty square and the second player always enters a $ 0$ into an empty square. When the board is full, the sum of the numbers in each of the nine $ 3 \times 3$ squares is calculated and the first player's score is the largest such sum. What is the largest score the first player can make, regardless of the responses of the second player?

2007 All-Russian Olympiad, 4

[i]A. Akopyan, A. Akopyan, A. Akopyan, I. Bogdanov[/i] A conjurer Arutyun and his assistant Amayak are going to show following super-trick. A circle is drawn on the board in the room. Spectators mark $2007$ points on this circle, after that Amayak removes one of them. Then Arutyun comes to the room and shows a semicircle, to which the removed point belonged. Explain, how Arutyun and Amayak may show this super-trick.

2015 Swedish Mathematical Competition, 6

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?

1987 Tournament Of Towns, (152) 3

In a game two players alternately choose larger natural numbers. At each turn the difference between the new and the old number must be greater than zero but smaller than the old number. The original number is 2. The winner is considered to be the player who chooses the number $1987$. In a perfect game, which player wins?

2018 Regional Olympiad of Mexico Center Zone, 4

Ana and Natalia alternately play on a $ n \times n$ board (Ana rolls first and $n> 1$). At the beginning, Ana's token is placed in the upper left corner and Natalia's in the lower right corner. A turn consists of moving the corresponding piece in any of the four directions (it is not allowed to move diagonally), without leaving the board. The winner is whoever manages to place their token on the opponent's token. Determine if either of them can secure victory after a finite number of turns.

2023 USA IMO Team Selection Test, 5

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]

2009 IMO Shortlist, 1

Consider $2009$ cards, each having one gold side and one black side, lying on parallel on a long table. Initially all cards show their gold sides. Two player, standing by the same long side of the table, play a game with alternating moves. Each move consists of choosing a block of $50$ consecutive cards, the leftmost of which is showing gold, and turning them all over, so those which showed gold now show black and vice versa. The last player who can make a legal move wins. (a) Does the game necessarily end? (b) Does there exist a winning strategy for the starting player? [i]Proposed by Michael Albert, Richard Guy, New Zealand[/i]

2023 Romania National Olympiad, 3

Let $n \geq 2$ be a natural number. We consider a $(2n - 1) \times (2n - 1)$ table.Ana and Bob play the following game: starting with Ana, the two of them alternately color the vertices of the unit squares, Ana with red and Bob with blue, in $2n^2$ rounds. Then, starting with Ana, each one forms a vector with origin at a red point and ending at a blue point, resulting in $2n^2$ vectors with distinct origins and endpoints. If the sum of these vectors is zero, Ana wins. Otherwise, Bob wins. Show that Bob has a winning strategy.

2019 Estonia Team Selection Test, 8

Let $n$ be a given positive integer. Sisyphus performs a sequence of turns on a board consisting of $n + 1$ squares in a row, numbered $0$ to $n$ from left to right. Initially, $n$ stones are put into square $0$, and the other squares are empty. At every turn, Sisyphus chooses any nonempty square, say with $k$ stones, takes one of these stones and moves it to the right by at most $k$ squares (the stone should say within the board). Sisyphus' aim is to move all $n$ stones to square $n$. Prove that Sisyphus cannot reach the aim in less than \[ \left \lceil \frac{n}{1} \right \rceil + \left \lceil \frac{n}{2} \right \rceil + \left \lceil \frac{n}{3} \right \rceil + \dots + \left \lceil \frac{n}{n} \right \rceil \] turns. (As usual, $\lceil x \rceil$ stands for the least integer not smaller than $x$. )

1981 Tournament Of Towns, (011) 5

a) A game is played on an infinite plane. There are fifty one pieces, one “wolf” and $50$ “sheep”. There are two players. The first commences by moving the wolf. Then the second player moves one of the sheep, the first player moves the wolf, the second player moves a sheep, and so on. The wolf and the sheep can move in any direction through a distance of up to one metre per move. Is it true that for any starting position the wolf will be able to capture at least one sheep? b) A game is played on an infinite plane. There are two players. One has a piece known as a “wolf”, while the other has $K$ pieces known as “sheep”. The first player moves the wolf, then the second player moves a sheep, the first player moves the wolf again, the second player moves a sheep, and so on. The wolf and the sheep can move in any direction, with a maximum distance of one metre per move. Is it true that for any value of $K$ there exists an initial position from which the wolf can not capture any sheep? PS. (a) was the junior version, (b) the senior one

2001 Moldova National Olympiad, Problem 3

During a fight, each of the $2001$ roosters has torn out exactly one feather of another rooster, and each rooster has lost a feather. It turned out that among any three roosters there is one who hasn’t torn out a feather from any of the other two roosters. Find the smallest $k$ with the following property: It is always possible to kill $k$ roosters and place the rest into two henhouses in such a way that no two roosters, one of which has torn out a feather from the other one, stay in the same henhouse.

2012 Tournament of Towns, 5

In an $8\times 8$ chessboard, the rows are numbers from $1$ to $8$ and the columns are labelled from $a$ to $h$. In a two-player game on this chessboard, the fi rst player has a White Rook which starts on the square $b2$, and the second player has a Black Rook which starts on the square $c4$. The two players take turns moving their rooks. In each move, a rook lands on another square in the same row or the same column as its starting square. However, that square cannot be under attack by the other rook, and cannot have been landed on before by either rook. The player without a move loses the game. Which player has a winning strategy?

2016 Philippine MO, 4

Tags: combinatorics , game , nim
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?

2018 Estonia Team Selection Test, 9

Let $m$ and $n$ be positive integers. Player $A$ has a field of $m \times n$, and player $B$ has a $1 \times n$ field (the first is the number of rows). On the first move, each player places on each square of his field white or black chip as he pleases. At each next on the move, each player can change the color of randomly chosen pieces on your field to the opposite, provided that in no row for this move will not change more than one chip (it is allowed not to change not a single chip). The moves are made in turn, player $A$ starts. Player $A$ wins if there is such a position that in the only row player $B$'s squares, from left to right, are the same as in some row of player's field $A$. Prove that player $A$ has the ability to win for any game of player $B$ if and only if $n <2m$.

KoMaL A Problems 2023/2024, A. 879

Fix an integer $k>2$. Two players, called Ana and Banana, play the following game of numbers. Initially, some integer $n \ge k$ gets written on the blackboard. Then they take moves in turn, with Ana beginning. A player making a move erases the number $m$ just written on the blackboard and replaces it by some number $m'$ with $k \le m' < m$ that is coprime to $m$. The first player who cannot move anymore loses. An integer $n \ge k $ is called good if Banana has a winning strategy when the initial number is $n$, and bad otherwise. Consider two integers $n,n' \ge k$ with the property that each prime number $p \le k$ divides $n$ if and only if it divides $n'$. Prove that either both $n$ and $n'$ are good or both are bad.

2021 Ukraine National Mathematical Olympiad, 1

Alexey and Bogdan play a game with two piles of stones. In the beginning, one of the piles contains $2021$ stones, and the second is empty. In one move, each of the guys has to pick up an even number of stones (more than zero) from an arbitrary pile, then transfer half of the stones taken to another pile, and the other half - to remove from the game. Loses the one who cannot make a move. Who will win this game if both strive to win, and Bogdan begins? (Oleksii Masalitin)

1987 All Soviet Union Mathematical Olympiad, 455

Two players are writting in turn natural numbers not exceeding $p$. The rules forbid to write the divisors of the numbers already having been written. Those who cannot make his move looses. a) Who, and how, can win if $p=10$? b) Who wins if $p=1000$?

Russian TST 2018, P2

Let $\mathcal{F}$ be a finite family of subsets of some set $X{}$. It is known that for any two elements $x,y\in X$ there exists a permutation $\pi$ of the set $X$ such that $\pi(x)=y$, and for any $A\in\mathcal{F}$ \[\pi(A):=\{\pi(a):a\in A\}\in\mathcal{F}.\]A bear and crocodile play a game. At a move, a player paints one or more elements of the set $X$ in his own color: brown for the bear, green for the crocodile. The first player to fully paint one of the sets in $\mathcal{F}$ in his own color loses. If this does not happen and all the elements of $X$ have been painted, it is a draw. The bear goes first. Prove that he doesn't have a winning strategy.

2019 Philippine TST, 1

Let $n$ be a given positive integer. Sisyphus performs a sequence of turns on a board consisting of $n + 1$ squares in a row, numbered $0$ to $n$ from left to right. Initially, $n$ stones are put into square $0$, and the other squares are empty. At every turn, Sisyphus chooses any nonempty square, say with $k$ stones, takes one of these stones and moves it to the right by at most $k$ squares (the stone should say within the board). Sisyphus' aim is to move all $n$ stones to square $n$. Prove that Sisyphus cannot reach the aim in less than \[ \left \lceil \frac{n}{1} \right \rceil + \left \lceil \frac{n}{2} \right \rceil + \left \lceil \frac{n}{3} \right \rceil + \dots + \left \lceil \frac{n}{n} \right \rceil \] turns. (As usual, $\lceil x \rceil$ stands for the least integer not smaller than $x$. )

2017 OMMock - Mexico National Olympiad Mock Exam, 2

Alice and Bob play on an infinite board formed by equilateral triangles. In each turn, Alice first places a white token on an unoccupied cell, and then Bob places a black token on an unoccupied cell. Alice's goal is to eventually have $k$ white tokens on a line. Determine the maximum value of $k$ for which Alice can achieve this no matter how Bob plays. [i]Proposed by Oriol Solé[/i]

1999 Slovenia National Olympiad, Problem 2

The numbers $1,\frac12,\frac13,\ldots,\frac1{1999}$ are written on a blackboard. In every step, we choose two of them, say $a$ and $b$, erase them, and write the number $ab+a+b$ instead. This step is repeated until only one number remains. Can the last remaining number be equal to $2000$?

1996 Rioplatense Mathematical Olympiad, Level 3, 5

There is a board with $n$ rows and $4$ columns, and white, yellow and light blue chips. Player $A$ places four tokens on the first row of the board and covers them so Player $B$ doesn't know them. How should player $B$ do to fill the minimum number of rows with chips that will ensure that in any of the rows he will have at least three hits? Clarification: A hit by player $B$ occurs when he places a token of the same color and in the same column as $A$.

1999 ITAMO, 4

Albert and Barbara play the following game. On a table there are $1999$ sticks, and each player in turn removes some of them: at least one stick, but at most half of the currently remaining sticks. The player who leaves just one stick on the table loses the game. Barbara moves first. Decide which player has a winning strategy and describe that strategy.

2016 India Regional Mathematical Olympiad, 4

Tags: number theory , odd , game
A box contains answer $4032$ scripts out of which exactly half have odd number of marks. We choose 2 scripts randomly and, if the scores on both of them are odd number, we add one mark to one of them, put the script back in the box and keep the other script outside. If both scripts have even scores, we put back one of the scripts and keep the other outside. If there is one script with even score and the other with odd score, we put back the script with the odd score and keep the other script outside. After following this procedure a number of times, there are 3 scripts left among which there is at least one script each with odd and even scores. Find, with proof, the number of scripts with odd scores among the three left.

2024 Belarus Team Selection Test, 3.3

Olya and Tolya are playing a game on $[0,1]$ segment. In the beginning it is white. In the first round Tolya chooses a number $0 \leq l \leq 1$, and then Olya chooses a subsegment of $[0,1]$ of length $l$ and recolors every its point to the opposite color(white to black, black to white). In the next round players change roles, etc. The game lasts $2024$ rounds. Let $L$ be the sum of length of white segments after the end of the game. If $L > \frac{1}{2}$ Olya wins, otherwise Tolya wins. Which player has a strategy to guarantee his win? [i]A. Naradzetski[/i]