Given some cards with either "$-1$" or "$+1$" written on the opposite side. You are allowed to choose a triple of cards and ask about the product of the three numbers on the cards. What is the minimal number of questions allowing to determine all the numbers on the cards ... a) for $30$ cards, b) for $31$ cards, c) for $32$ cards. (You should prove, that you cannot manage with less questions.) d) Fifty above mentioned cards are lying along the circumference. You are allowed to ask about the product of three consecutive numbers only. You need to determine the product af all the $50$ numbers. What is the minimal number of questions allowing to determine it?

Let $m,n$ be positive integers with $1 \le n < m$. A box is locked with several padlocks which must all be opened to open the box, and which all have different keys. The keys are distributed among $m$ people. Suppose that among these people, no $n$ can open the box, but any $n+1$ can open it. Find the smallest possible number $l$ of locks and then the total number of keys for which this is possible.

The plan of a picture gallery is a chequered figure where each square is a room, and every room can be reached from each other by moving to adjacent rooms. A custodian in a room can watch all the rooms that can be reached from this room by one move of a chess queen (without leaving the gallery). What minimum number of custodians is sufficient to watch all the rooms in every gallery of $n$ rooms ($n > 2$)?

Find the smallest positive integer $n$ for which we can find an integer $m$ such that $\left[\frac{10^n}{m}\right] = 1989$.

Find the smallest natural number $x> 0$ so that all following fractions are simplified $\frac{3x+9}{8},\frac{3x+10}{9},\frac{3x+11}{10},...,\frac{3x+49}{48}$ , i.e. numerators and denominators are relatively prime.

Let two positive integers $x, y$ satisfy the condition $44 /( x^2 + y^2)$. Determine the smallest value of $T = x^3 + y^3$.

Given that $a_1, a_2, . . . , a_n$ are nonnegative real numbers with $a_1 + \cdots + a_n = 1$, prove that the expression $$ \frac{a_1}{1+a_2 +a_3 +\cdots +a_n }\; +\; \frac{a_2}{1+a_1 +a_3 +\cdots +a_n }\; +\; \cdots \; +\, \frac{a_n }{1+a_1 +a_2+\cdots +a_{n-1} }$$ attains its minimum, and determine this minimum.

Find the minimum of the expression $\frac{a + b + c}{2} -\frac{[a, b] + [b, c] + [c, a]}{a + b + c}$ where the variables $a, b, c$ are any integers greater than $1$ and $[x, y]$ denotes the least common multiple of numbers $x, y$.

Find positive real numbers $x,y,z$ that are solutions of the system $x+y+z=xy+yz+zx$ and $xyz=1$ , and have the smallest possible sum.

$20$ numbers are written on the board $1, 2, ... ,20$. Two players are putting signs before the numbers in turn ($+$ or $-$). The first wants to obtain the minimal possible absolute value of the sum. What is the maximal value of the absolute value of the sum that can be achieved by the second player?

What is the smallest possible value of $x^2+2y^2-x-2y-xy$?

$4$ men stand at the entrance of a dark tunnel. Man $A$ needs $10$ minutes to pass through the tunnel, man $B$ needs $5$ minutes, man $C$ needs $2$ minutes and man $D$ needs $1$ minute. There is only one torch, that may be used from anyone that passes through the tunnel. Additionaly, at most $2$ men can pass through at the same time using the existing torch. Determine the smallest possible time the four men need to reach the exit of the tunnel.

In a math competition, $14$ schools participate, each sending $14$ students. The students are separated into $14$ groups of $14$ so that no two students from the same school are in the same group. The tournament organizers noted that, from the competitors, exactly $15$ have participated in the competition before. The organizers want to select two representatives, with the conditions that they must be former participants, must come from different schools, and must also be in different groups. It turns out that there are $ n$ ways to do this. What is the minimum possible value of $n$?

Let $n$ be a fixed positive integer and let $b(n)$ be the minimum value of $$k+\frac{n}{k},$$ where $k$ is allowed to range through all positive integers. Prove that $\lfloor b(n) \rfloor= \lfloor \sqrt{4n+1} \rfloor.$

An ant, which is on an edge of a cube of side $8$, must travel on the surface and return to the starting point. It's path must contain interior points of the six faces of the cube and should visit only once each face of the cube. Find the length of the path that the ant can carry out and justify why it is the shortest path.

As you know, the moon revolves around the earth. We assume that the Earth and the Moon are points, and the Moon rotates around the Earth in a circular orbit with a period of one revolution per month. The flying saucer is in the plane of the lunar orbit. It can be jumped through the Moon and the Earth - from the old place (point $A$), it instantly appears in the new (at point $A '$) so that either the Moon or the Earth is in the middle of segment $AA'$. Between the jumps, the flying saucer hangs motionless in outer space. 1) Determine the minimum number of jumps a flying saucer will need to jump from any point inside the lunar orbit to any other point inside the lunar orbit. 2) Prove that a flying saucer, using an unlimited number of jumps, can jump from any point inside the lunar orbit to any other point inside the lunar orbit for any period of time, for example, in a second.

Suppose we have two identical cardboard polygons. We placed one polygon upon the other one and aligned. Then we pierced polygons with a pin at a point. Then we turned one of the polygons around this pin by $25^o 30'$. It turned out that the polygons coincided (aligned again). What is the minimal possible number of sides of the polygons?

$1+2+3+4+5+6=6+7+8$. What is the smallest number $k$ greater than $6$ for which: $1 + 2 +...+ k = k + (k+1) +...+ n$, with $n$ an integer greater than $k$ ?

Given a piece of graph paper with a letter assigned to each vertex of every square such that on every segment connecting two vertices that have the same letter and are on the same line of the mesh, there is at least one vertex with another letter. What is the least number of distinct letters needed to plot such a picture, along the sides of the cells?

In the diagram below $a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j$ are distinct positive integers and each (except $a, e, h$ and $j$) is the sum of the two numbers to the left and above. For example, $b = a + e, f = e + h, i = h + j$. What is the smallest possible value of $d$? j h i e f g a b c d

Find the smallest positive value of $36^k - 5^m$, where $k$ and $m$ are positive integers.

The natural numbers $x_1$ and $x_2$ are less than $1000$. We construct a sequence: $$x_3 = |x_1 - x_2|$$ $$x_4 = min \{ |x_1 - x_2|, |x_1 - x_3|, |x_2 - x_3|\}$$ $$...$$ $$x_k = min \{ |x_i - x_j|, 0 <i < j < k\}$$ $$...$$ Prove that $x_{21} = 0$.

Let $a, b,c$ and $d$ be real numbers such that $a + b + c + d = 2$ and $ab + bc + cd + da + ac + bd = 0$. Find the minimum value and the maximum value of the product $abcd$.

A cinema has its seats arranged in $n$ rows $\times m$ columns. It sold mn tickets but sold some seats more than once. The usher managed to allocate seats so that every ticket holder was in the correct row or column. Show that he could have allocated seats so that every ticket holder was in the correct row or column and at least one person was in the correct seat. What is the maximum $k$ such that he could have always put every ticket holder in the correct row or column and at least $k$ people in the correct seat?

Alex is going to make a set of cubical blocks of the same size and to write a digit on each of their faces so that it would be possible to form every $30$-digit integer with these blocks. What is the minimal number of blocks in a set with this property? (The digits $6$ and $9$ do not turn one into another.)