Found problems: 304
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 $p=1000$?
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.)
Jesse and Tjeerd are playing a game. Jesse has access to $n\ge 2$ stones. There are two boxes: in the black box there is room for half of the stones (rounded down) and in the white box there is room for half of the stones (rounded up). Jesse and Tjeerd take turns, with Jesse starting. Jesse grabs in his turn, always one new stone, writes a positive real number on the stone and places put him in one of the boxes that isn't full yet. Tjeerd sees all these numbers on the stones in the boxes and on his turn may move any stone from one box to the other box if it is not yet full, but he may also choose to do nothing. The game stops when both boxes are full. If then the total value of the stones in the black box is greater than the total value of the stones in the white box, Jesse wins; otherwise win Tjeerd. For every $n \ge 2$, determine who can definitely win (and give a corresponding winning strategy).
Albert and Brita play a game with a bar of $19$ adjacent squares. Initially, there is a button on the middle square of the bar. At every turn Albert mentions one positive integer less than $5$, and Brita moves button a number of squares in the direction of her choice - while doing so however, Brita must not move the button more than twice in one direction order. Prove that Albert can choose the numbers so that by the $19$th turn, Brita to be forced to move the button out of the bar.
Kiko and Ñoño play with a rod of length $2n$ where $n \le 3$ is an integer. Kiko cuts the rod in $ k \le 2n$ pieces of integer lengths. Then Ñoño has to arrange these pieces so that they form a hexagon of equal opposite sides and equal angles. The pieces can not be split and they all have to be used. If Ñoño achieves his goal, he wins, in any other case, Kiko wins. Determine which victory can be secured based on $k$.
On a table, there is an empty bag and a chessboard containing exactly one token on each square. Next to the table is a large pile that contains an unlimited supply of tokens. Using only the following types of moves what is the maximum possible number of tokens that can be in the bag?
$\bullet$ Type 1: Choose a non-empty square on the chessboard that is not in the rightmost column. Take a token from this square and place it, along with one token from the pile, on the square immediately to its right.
$\bullet$ Type 2: Choose a non-empty square on the chessboard that is not in the bottommost row. Take a token from this square and place it, along with one token from the pile, on the square immediately below it.
$\bullet$ Type 3: Choose two adjacent non-empty squares. Remove a token from each and put them both into the bag.
(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)
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]
Mary and Pat play the following number game. Mary picks an initial integer greater than $2017$. She then multiplies this number by $2017$ and adds $2$ to the result. Pat will add $2019$ to this new number and it will again be Mary’s turn. Both players will continue to take alternating turns. Mary will always multiply the current number by $2017$ and add $2$ to the result when it is her turn. Pat will always add $2019$ to the current number when it is his turn. Pat wins if any of the numbers obtained by either player is divisible by $2018$. Mary wants to prevent Pat from winning the game.
Determine, with proof, the smallest initial integer Mary could choose in order to achieve this.
A [i]site[/i] is any point $(x, y)$ in the plane such that $x$ and $y$ are both positive integers less than or equal to 20.
Initially, each of the 400 sites is unoccupied. Amy and Ben take turns placing stones with Amy going first. On her turn, Amy places a new red stone on an unoccupied site such that the distance between any two sites occupied by red stones is not equal to $\sqrt{5}$. On his turn, Ben places a new blue stone on any unoccupied site. (A site occupied by a blue stone is allowed to be at any distance from any other occupied site.) They stop as soon as a player cannot place a stone.
Find the greatest $K$ such that Amy can ensure that she places at least $K$ red stones, no matter how Ben places his blue stones.
[i]Proposed by Gurgen Asatryan, Armenia[/i]
$60$ symbols, each of which is either $X$ or $O$, are written consecutively on a strip of paper. This strip must then be cut into pieces with each piece containing symbols symmetric about their centre, e.g. $O, XX, OXXXXX, XOX$, etc.
(a) Prove that there is a way of cutting the strip so that there are no more than $24$ such pieces.
(b) Give an example of such an arrangement of the signs for which the number of pieces cannot be less than $15$.
(c) Try to improve the result of (b).
Let $m$ and $n$ be natural numbers with $mn$ even. Jetze is going to cover an $m \times n$ board (consisting of $m$ rows and $n$ columns) with dominoes, so that every domino covers exactly two squares, dominos do not protrude or overlap, and all squares are covered by a domino. Merlin then moves all the dominoe color red or blue on the board. Find the smallest non-negative integer $V$ (in terms of $m$ and $n$) so that Merlin can always ensure that in each row the number squares covered by a red domino and the number of squares covered by a blue one dominoes are not more than $V$, no matter how Jetze covers the board.
A certain town is represented as an infinite plane, which is divided by straight lines into squares. The lines are streets, while the squares are blocks. Along a certain street there stands a policeman on each $100$th intersection . Somewhere in the town there is a bandit , whose position and speed are unknown, but he can move only along the streets. The aim of the police is to see the bandit . Does there exist an algorithm available to the police to enable them to achieve their aim?
(A. Andjans, Riga)
Anna and Berta play a game in which they take turns in removing marbles from a table. Anna takes the first turn. When at the beginning of the turn there are $n\geq 1$ marbles on the table, then the player whose turn it is removes $k$ marbles, where $k\geq 1$ either is an even number with $k\leq \frac{n}{2}$ or an odd number with $\frac{n}{2}\leq k\leq n$. A player win the game if she removes the last marble from the table.
Determine the smallest number $N\geq 100000$ such that Berta can enforce a victory if there are exactly $N$ marbles on the tale in the beginning.
Rodolfo and Gabriela have $9$ chips numbered from $1$ to $9$ and they have fun with the following game: They remove the chips one by one and alternately (until they have $3$ chips each), with the following rules:
$\bullet$ Rodolfo begins the game, choosing a chip and in the following moves he must remove, each time, a chip three units greater than the last chip drawn by Gabriela.
$\bullet$ Gabriela, on her turn, chooses a first chip and in the following times she must draw, each time, a chip two units smaller than the last chip that she herself drew.
$\bullet$ The game is won by whoever gets the highest number by adding up their three tokens.
$\bullet$ If the game cannot be completed, a tie is declared.
If they play without making mistakes, how should Rodolfo play to be sure he doesn't lose?
A figure on a computer screen shows $n$ points on a sphere, no four coplanar. Some pairs of points are joined by segments. Each segment is colored red or blue. For each point there is a key that switches the colors of all segments with that point as endpoint. For every three points there is a sequence of key presses that makes the three segments between them red. Show that it is possible to make all the segments on the screen red. Find the smallest number of key presses that can turn all the segments red, starting from the worst case.
Amber and Brian are playing a game using $2010$ coins. Throughout the game, the coins are divided into a number of piles of at least 1 coin each. A move consists of choosing one or more piles and dividing each of them into two smaller piles. (So piles consisting of only $1$ coin cannot be chosen.)
Initially, there is only one pile containing all $2010$ coins. Amber and Brian alternatingly take turns to make a move, starting with Amber. The winner is the one achieving the situation where all piles have only one coin.
Show that Amber can win the game, no matter which moves Brian makes.
Let $n$ be a natural number. At first the cells of a table $2n$ x $2n$ are colored in white. Two players $A$ and $B$ play the following game. First is $A$ who has to color $m$ arbitrary cells in red and after that $B$ chooses $n$ rows and $n$ columns and color their cells in black. Player $A$ wins, if there is at least one red cell on the board. Find the least value of $m$ for which $A$ wins no matter how $B$ plays.
Let $T$ be the set of ordered triples $(x,y,z)$, where $x,y,z$ are integers with $0\leq x,y,z\leq9$. Players $A$ and $B$ play the following guessing game. Player $A$ chooses a triple $(x,y,z)$ in $T$, and Player $B$ has to discover $A$[i]'s[/i] triple in as few moves as possible. A [i]move[/i] consists of the following: $B$ gives $A$ a triple $(a,b,c)$ in $T$, and $A$ replies by giving $B$ the number $\left|x+y-a-b\right |+\left|y+z-b-c\right|+\left|z+x-c-a\right|$. Find the minimum number of moves that $B$ needs to be sure of determining $A$[i]'s[/i] triple.
For positive integers $t,a$, and $b$, Lucy and Windy play the $(t,a,b)$- [i]game [/i] defined by the following rules. Initially, the number $t$ is written on a blackboard. On her turn, a player erases the number on the board and writes either the number $t - a$ or $t - b$ on the board. Lucy goes first and then the players alternate. The player who first reaches a negative losses the game. Prove that there exist infinitely many values of $t$ in which Lucy has a winning strategy for all pairs $(a, b)$ with $a + b = 2005$.
Pasha and Vova play the following game, making moves in turn; Pasha moves first. Initially, they have a large piece of plasticine. By a move, Pasha cuts one of the existing pieces into three(of arbitrary sizes), and Vova merges two existing pieces into one. Pasha wins if at some point there appear to be $100$ pieces of equal weights. Can Vova prevent Pasha's win?
A set $A$ of squares is given on a chessboard which is infinite in all directions. On each square of this chessboard which does not belong to $A$ there is a king. On a command all kings may be moved in such a way that each king either remains on its square or is moved to an adjacent square, which may have been occupied by another king before the command. Each square may be occupied by at most one king. Does there exist such a number $k$ and such a way of moving the kings that after $k$ moves the kings will occupy all squares of the chessboard? Consider the following cases:
(a) $A$ is the set of all squares, both of whose coordinates are multiples of $100$. (There is a horizontal line numbered by the integers from $-\infty$ to $+\infty$, and a similar vertical line. Each square of the chessboard may be denoted by two numbers, its coordinates with respect to these axes.)
(b) $A$ is the set of all squares which are covered by $100$ fixed arbitrary queens (i.e. each square covered by at least one queen).
Remark:
If $A$ consists of just one square, then $k = 1$ and the required way is the following:
all kings to the left of the square of $A$ make one move to the right.
Ana plays a game on a $100\times 100$ chessboard. Initially, there is a white pawn on each square of the bottom row and a black pawn on each square of the top row, and no other pawns anywhere else.\\
Each white pawn moves toward the top row and each black pawn moves toward the bottom row in one of the following ways:
[list]
[*] it moves to the square directly in front of it if there is no other pawn on it;
[*] it [b]captures[/b] a pawn on one of the diagonally adjacent squares in the row immediately in front of it if there is a pawn of the opposite color on it.
[/list]
(We say a pawn $P$ [b]captures[/b] a pawn $Q$ of the opposite color if we remove $Q$ from the board and move $P$ to the square that $Q$ was previously on.)\\
\\
Ana can move any pawn (not necessarily alternating between black and white) according to those rules. What is the smallest number of pawns that can remain on the board after no more moves can be made?
[i]Proposed by José Alejandro Reyes González, Mexico[/i]
Let $n> 1$ be an odd integer. On a square surface have been placed $n^2 - 1$ white slabs and a black slab on the center. Two workers $A$ and $B$ take turns removing them, betting that whoever removes black will lose. First
$A$ picks a slab; if it has row number $i \ge (n + 1) / 2$, then it will remove all tiles from rows with number
greater than or equal to$ i$, while if $i <(n + 1) / 2$, then it will remove all tiles from the rows with lesser number
or equal to $i$. Proceed in a similar way with columns. Then $B$ chooses one of the remaining tiles and repeats the
process. Determine who has a winning strategy and describe it.
Note: Row and column numbering is ascending from top to bottom and from left to right.
$n$ points are marked on the board points that are vertices of the regular $n$ -gon. One of the points is a chip. Two players take turns moving it to the other marked point and at the same time draw a segment that connects them. If two points already connected by a segment, such a move is prohibited. A player who can't make a move, lose. Which of the players can guarantee victory?