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?

(a) The vertices of a regular $10$-gon are painted in turn black and white. Two people play the following game . Each in turn draws a diagonal connecting two vertices of the same colour . These diagonals must not intersect . The winner is the player who is able to make the last move. Who will win if both players adopt the best strategy? (b) Answer the same question for the regular $12$-gon . (V.G. Ivanov)

There are $36$ cards in a deck arranged in the sequence spades, clubs, hearts, diamonds, spades, clubs, hearts, diamonds, etc. Somebody took part of this deck off the top, turned it upside down, and cut this part into the remaining part of the deck (i.e. inserted it between two consecutive cards). Then four cards were taken off the top, then another four, etc. Prove that in any of these sets of four cards, all the cards are of different suits. (A Merkov, Moscow)

LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony play a game of one-on-one basketball where the first player to $3$ points or more wins. LeBron James has a $20\%$ chance of making a $3$-point shot; Carmelo has a $10\%$ chance of making a $3$-pointer. LeBron has a $40\%$ chance of making a $2$-point shot from anywhere inside the $3$-point line (excluding dunks, which are also worth $2$ points); Carmelo has a $52\%$ chance of making a $ 2$-point shot from anywhere inside the 3-point line (excluding dunks). LeBron has a $90\%$ chance of dunking on Carmelo; Carmelo has a $95\%$ chance of dunking on LeBron. If each player has $3$ possessions to try to win, LeBron James goes first, and both players follow a rational strategy to try to win, what is the probability that Carmelo Anthony wins the game?

Three persons $A,B,C$, are playing the following game: A $k$-element subset of the set $\{1, . . . , 1986\}$ is randomly chosen, with an equal probability of each choice, where $k$ is a fixed positive integer less than or equal to $1986$. The winner is $A,B$ or $C$, respectively, if the sum of the chosen numbers leaves a remainder of $0, 1$, or $2$ when divided by $3$. For what values of $k$ is this game a fair one? (A game is fair if the three outcomes are equally probable.)

Player Zero and Player One play a game on a $n \times n$ board ($n \ge 1$). The columns of this $n \times n$ board are numbered $1,2,4,\dots,2^{n-1}$. Turn my turn, the players put their own number in one of the free cells (thus Player Zero puts a $0$ and Player One puts a $1$). Player Zero begins. When the board is filled, the game ends and each row yields a (reverse binary) number obtained by adding the values of the columns with a $1$ in that row. For instance, when $n=4$, a row with $0101$ yields the number $0 \cdot1+1 \cdot 2+0 \cdot 4+1 \cdot 8=10$. a) For which natural numbers $n$ can Player One always ensure that at least one of the row numbers is divisible by $4$? b) For which natural numbers $n$ can Player One always ensure that at least one of the row numbers is divisible by $3$?

A Mathlon is a competition where there are $M$ athletic events. $A, B$ and $C$ were the only participants of a Mathlon. In each event, $p_1$ points were given to the first place, $p_2$ points to the second place and $p_3$ points to third place, with $p_1> p_2> p_3> 0$ where $p_1$, $p_2$ and $p_3$ are integer numbers. The final result was $22$ points for $A$, $9$ for $B$, and $9$ for $C$. $B$ won the $100$ meter dash. Determine $M$ and who was the second in high jump.

A hunter and an invisible rabbit play a game in the Euclidean plane. The rabbit's starting point, $A_0,$ and the hunter's starting point, $B_0$ are the same. After $n-1$ rounds of the game, the rabbit is at point $A_{n-1}$ and the hunter is at point $B_{n-1}.$ In the $n^{\text{th}}$ round of the game, three things occur in order: [list=i] [*]The rabbit moves invisibly to a point $A_n$ such that the distance between $A_{n-1}$ and $A_n$ is exactly $1.$ [*]A tracking device reports a point $P_n$ to the hunter. The only guarantee provided by the tracking device to the hunter is that the distance between $P_n$ and $A_n$ is at most $1.$ [*]The hunter moves visibly to a point $B_n$ such that the distance between $B_{n-1}$ and $B_n$ is exactly $1.$ [/list] Is it always possible, no matter how the rabbit moves, and no matter what points are reported by the tracking device, for the hunter to choose her moves so that after $10^9$ rounds, she can ensure that the distance between her and the rabbit is at most $100?$ [i]Proposed by Gerhard Woeginger, Austria[/i]

SQUARING OFF: Master Chief and Samus Aran take turns firing rockets at one another from across the Cartesian plane. Master Chief’s movement is restricted to lattice points within the $10\times 10$ square with vertices $(0,0)$, $(0,10)$, $(10,0)$, and $(10,10)$, while Samus Aran’s movement is restricted to lattice points inside the $10\times 10$ square with vertices $(0,0)$, $(-10,0)$, $(0,-10)$, and $(-10,-10)$. Neither player can be located on or beyond the border of his or her square. Both players randomly choose a lattice point at which they begin the game, and do not move the rest of the game (until either they are killed or kill the other player). Each player’s turn consists of firing a rocket, targeted at a specific undestroyed lattice point inside the border of the opponent’s movement square, which hits immediately. When a rocket hits its intended lattice point, it explodes, destroying the surrounding $3\times 3$ square ($8$ additional adjacent lattice points). The game ends when one player is hit by a rocket (when the player is located within the $3\times 3$ grid hit by a rocket). If the highest possible probability that Samus Aran wins the game in three turns or less, assuming Master Chief goes first, is expressed as $a/b$, where $a$ and $b$ are relatively prime integers, find $a+b$.

Ana and Beto are playing a game. Ana writes a whole number on the board. Beto then has the right to erase the number and add $2$ to it, or erase the number and subtract $3$, as many times as he wants. Beto wins if he can get $2021$ after a finite number of stages; otherwise, Ana wins. Which player has a winning strategy?

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 $x$. )

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.

In the game "cat and mouse" the cat chases the mouse in either labyrinth $A, B$ or $C$ . [img]https://cdn.artofproblemsolving.com/attachments/4/5/429d106736946011f4607cf95956dcb0937c84.png[/img] The cat makes the first move starting at the point marked "$K$" , moving along a marked line to an adjacent point . The mouse then moves , under the same rules, starting from the point marked "$M$" . Then the cat moves again, and so on . If, at a point of time , the cat and mouse are at the same point the cat eats the mouse. Is there available to the cat a strategy which would enable it to catch the mouse , in cases $A, B$ and $C$? (A. Sosinskiy, Moscow)

$1992$ vectors are given in the plane. Two players pick unpicked vectors alternately. The winner is the one whose vectors sum to a vector with larger magnitude (or they draw if the magnitudes are the same). Can the first player always avoid losing?

$n$ people are in the plane, so that the closest person is unique and each one shoot this closest person with a squirt gun. If $n$ is odd, prove that there exists at least one person that nobody shot. If $n$ is even, will there always be a person who escape? Justify that.

There are totally $16$ teams participating in a football tournament, each team playing with every other exactly $1$ time. In each match, the winner gains $3$ points, the loser gains $0$ point and each teams gain $1$ point for the tie match. Suppose that at the end of the tournament, each team gains the same number of points. Prove that there are at least $4$ teams that have the same number of winning matches, the same number of losing matches and the same number of tie matches.

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 $2000$?

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]

Given a regular $72$-gon. Lenya and Kostya play the game "Make an equilateral triangle." They take turns marking with a pencil on one still unmarked angle of the $72$-gon: Lenya uses red. Kostya uses blue. Lenya starts the game, and the one who marks first wins if its color is three vertices that are the vertices of some equilateral triangle, if all the vertices are marked and no such a triangle exists, the game ends in a draw. Prove that Kostya can play like this so as not to lose.

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]

Four coins are laid out on a table so that they form the corners of a square. One move consists of tipping one of the coins by letting it jump over one of the others the coin so that it ends up on the directly opposite side of the other coin, the same distance from as it was before the move was made. Is it possible to make a number of moves so that the coins ends up in the corners of a square with a different side length than the original square?

In a table consisting of $2021\times 2021$ unit squares, some unit squares are colored black in such a way that if we place a mouse in the center of any square on the table it can walk in a straight line (up, down, left or right along a column or row) and leave the table without walking on any black square (other than the initial one if it is black). What is the maximum number of squares that can be colored black?

Let $d$ and $m$ be two fixed positive integers. Pinocchio and Geppetto know the values of $d$ and $m$ and play the following game: In the beginning, Pinocchio chooses a polynomial $P$ of degree at most $d$ with integer coefficients. Then Geppetto asks him questions of the following form "What is the value of $P(n)$?'' for $n \in \mathbb{Z}$. Pinocchio usually says the truth, but he can lie up to $m$ times. What is, as a function of $d$ and $m$, the minimal number of questions that Geppetto needs to ask to be sure to determine $P$, no matter how Pinocchio chooses to reply?

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?

[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.