Problems

The evil stepmother, leaving for the ball, gave Cinderella a bag in which rice and cous-cous were mixed, and ordered for them to be sorted. When Cinderella was leaving for the ball, she left three bags: one was rice, the other – cous-cous, and in the third – an unsorted mixture. In order not to confuse the bags, Cinderella attached to each of them a sign saying: “Rice”, “Cous-cous” and “Mixture”.

The stepmother returned from the ball first and deliberately swapped all the signs in such a way that on every sack there was an incorrect sign. The Fairy Godmother managed to warn Cinderella that now none of the signs on the bags are true. Then Cinderella took out only one single grain from one sack and, looking at it, immediately worked out what was in each bag. How did she do it?

In Wonderland, an investigation was conducted into the case of a stolen soup. At the trial, the White Rabbit said that the soup was stolen by the Mad Hatter. The Cheshire Cat and the Mad Hatter also testified, but what they said, no one remembered, and the record was washed away by Alice’s tears. During the court session, it became clear that only one of the defendants had stolen the soup and that only he had given a truthful testimony. So, who stole the soup?

In a room, there are 85 balloons – red and blue ones. It is known that: 1) at least one of the balls is red, 2) from each arbitrarily chosen pair of balls at least one is blue. How many red balls are there in the room?

If the Humpbacked Horse does not eat or sleep for seven days, it will lose its magical powers. Suppose he did not eat or sleep for a week. What should he do first of all by the end of the seventh day – eat or sleep, so as not to lose powers?

When Harvey was asked to come up with a problem for the mathematical Olympiad in Sunny City, he wrote a rebus (see the drawing). Can it be solved? (Different letters must match different numbers).

In the rebus below, replace the letters with numbers such that the same numbers are represented with the same letter. The asterisks can be replaced with any numbers such that the equations hold.

An explanation of the notation used: the unknown numbers in the third and fourth rows are the results of multiplying 1995 by each digit of the number in the second row, respectively. These third and fourth rows are added together to get the total result of the multiplication \(1995 \times ***\), which is the number in the fifth row. This is an example of a “long multiplication table”.

Alex laid out an example of an addition of numbers from cards with numbers on them and then swapped two cards. As you can see, the equality has been violated. Which cards did Alex rearrange?

In the line of numbers and signs \({}* 1 * 2 * 4 * 8 * 16 * 32 * 64 = 27\) position the signs “\(+\)” or “\(-\)” instead of the signs “\(*\)”, so that the equality becomes true.

The code of lock is a two-digit number. Ben forgot the code, but he remembers that the sum of the digits of this number, combined with their product, is equal to the number itself. Write all possible code options so that Ben could open the lock quickly.

Jessica, Nicole and Alex received 6 coins between them: 3 gold coins and 3 silver coins. Each of them received 2 coins. Jessica doesn’t know which coins the others received but only which coins she has. Think of a question which Jessica can answer with either “yes”, “no” or “I don’t know” such that from the answer you can know which coins Jessica has.