Two players play the following game. The first player starts by writing either $0$ or $1$ and then, on his every move, chooses either $0$ or $1$ and writes it to the right of the existing digits until there are $1999$ digits. Each time the first player puts down a digit (except the first one) , the second player chooses two digits among those already written and swaps them. Can the second player guarantee that after his last move the line of digits will be symmetrical about the middle digit? (I Izmestiev)

$ 1994$ girls are seated at a round table. Initially one girl holds $ n$ tokens. Each turn a girl who is holding more than one token passes one token to each of her neighbours. a.) Show that if $ n < 1994$, the game must terminate. b.) Show that if $ n \equal{} 1994$ it cannot terminate.

Nils is playing a game with a bag originally containing $n$ red and one black marble. He begins with a fortune equal to $1$. In each move he picks a real number $x$ with $0 \le x \le y$, where his present fortune is $y$. Then he draws a marble from the bag. If the marble is red, his fortune increases by $x$, but if it is black, it decreases by $x$. The game is over after $n$ moves when there is only a single marble left. In each move Nils chooses $x$ so that he ensures a final fortune greater or equal to $Y$ . What is the largest possible value of $Y$?

(a)The game of "super- chess" is played on a $30 \times 30$ board and involves $20$ different pieces. Each piece moves according to its own rules , but cannot move from any square to more than $20$ other squares . A piece "captures" another piece which is on a square to which it has moved. A permitted move (e.g. $m$ squares forward and $n$ squares to the right) does not depend on the piece 's starting square . Prove that (i) A piece cannot cap ture a piece on a given square from more than $20$ starting squares. (ii) It is possible to arrange all $20$ pieces on the board in such a way that not one of them can capture any of the others in one move. (b) The game of "super-chess" is played on a $100 \times 100$ board and involves $20$ different pieces. Each piece moves according to its own rules , but cannot move from any square to more than $20$ other squares. A piece "captures" another piece which is on a square to which it has moved. It is possible that a permitted move (e.g. $m$ squares forward and $n$ squares to the right) may vary, depending on the piece's position . Prove that one can arrange all $20$ pieces on the board in such a way that not one of them can capture any of the others in one move. ( A . K . Tolpygo, Kiev) PS. (a) for Juniors , (b) for Seniors

You are given positive integers $m, n>1$. Vasyl and Petryk play the following game: they take turns marking on the coordinate plane yet unmarked points of the form $(x, y)$, where $x, y$ are positive integers with $1 \leq x \leq m, 1 \leq y \leq n$. The player loses if after his move there are two marked points, the distance between which is not a positive integer. Who will win this game if Vasyl moves first and each player wants to win? [i]Proposed by Mykyta Kharin[/i]

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.

Xenia and Yagve take turns in playing the following game: A coin is placed on the first box in a row of nine cells. At each turn the player may choose to move the coin forward one step, move the coin forward four steps, or move coin back two steps. For a move to be allowed, the coin must land on one of them of nine cells. The winner is one who gets to move the coin to the last ninth cell. Who wins, given that Xenia makes the first move, and both players play optimally?

Adithya and Bill are playing a game on a connected graph with $n > 2$ vertices, two of which are labeled $A$ and $B$, so that $A$ and $B$ are distinct and non-adjacent and known to both players. Adithya starts on vertex $A$ and Bill starts on $B$. Each turn, both players move simultaneously: Bill moves to an adjacent vertex, while Adithya may either move to an adjacent vertex or stay at his current vertex. Adithya loses if he is on the same vertex as Bill, and wins if he reaches $B$ alone. Adithya cannot see where Bill is, but Bill can see where Adithya is. Given that Adithya has a winning strategy, what is the maximum possible number of edges the graph may have? (Your answer may be in terms of $n$.) [i]Proposed by Steven Liu[/i]

On the table there are $2016$ coins. Two players play the following game making alternating moves. In one move it is allowed to take $1, 2$ or $3$ coins. The player who takes the last coin wins. Which player has a winning strategy?

The teacher wrote on a blackboard: $$x^2 + 10x + 20$$ Then all the pupils in the class came up in turn and either decreased or increased by $1$ either the free coefficient or the coefficient at $x$, but not both. Finally they have obtained: $$x^2 + 20x + 10$$ Is it true that some time during the process there was written the square polynomial with the integer roots?

Alice and Bob are playing a year number game. There will be two game numbers $19$ and $20$ and one starting number from the set $\{9, 10\}$ used. Alice chooses independently her game number and Bob chooses the starting number. The other number is given to Bob. Then Alice adds her game number to the starting number, Bob adds his game number to the result, Alice adds her number of games to the result, etc. The game continues until the number $2019$ is reached or exceeded. Whoever reaches the number $2019$ wins. If $2019$ is exceeded, the game ends in a draw. $\bullet$ Show that Bob cannot win. $\bullet$ What starting number does Bob have to choose to prevent Alice from winning? (Richard Henner)

Consider a game played on the integers in the closed interval $[1, n]$. The game begins with some tokens placed in $[1, n]$. At each turn, tokens are added or removed from$ [1, n]$ using the following rule: For each integer $k \in [1, n]$, if exactly one of $k - 1$ and $k + 1$ has a token, place a token at $k$ for the next turn, otherwise leave k blank for the next turn. We call a position [i]static [/i] if no changes to the interval occur after one turn. For instance, the trivial position with no tokens is static because no tokens are added or removed after a turn (because there are no tokens). Find all non-trivial static positions.

Two player are playing in an $100 \times 100$ grid. Initially the whole board is black. On $A$'s move, he selects $4 \times 4$ subgrid and color it white. On $B$'s move, he selects a $3 \times 3$ subgrid and colors it black. $A$ wants to make the whole board white. Can he do it? [i]Proposed by S M A Nahian[/i]

Form $10A$ has $29$ students who are listed in order on its duty roster. Form $10B$ has $32$ students who are listed in order on its duty roster. Every day two students are on duty, one from form $10A$ and one from form $10B$. Each day just one of the students on duty changes and is replaced by the following student on the relevant roster (when the last student on a roster is replaced he is replaced by the first). On two particular days the same two students were on duty. Is it possible that starting on the first of these days and ending the day before the second, every pair of students (one from $10A$ and one from $10B$) shared duty exactly once?

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.

There are two boxes containing balls. One of them contains $m$ balls, and the other contains $n$ balls, where $m, n > 0$. Two actions are permitted: (i) Remove an equal number of balls from both boxes. (ii) Increase the number of balls in one of the boxes by a factor $k$. Is it possible to remove all of the balls from both boxes with just these two actions, 1. if $k = 2$? 2. if $k = 3$?