Problems

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Found: 21

An \(8 \times 8\) chessboard has 30 diagonals total (15 in each direction). Is it possible to place several chess pieces on this chessboard in such a way that the total number of pieces on each diagonal would be odd?

Anna’s garden is a grid of \(n \times m\) squares. She wants to have trees in some of these squares, but she wants the total number of trees in each column and in each row to be an odd number (not necessarily the same, they just all need to be odd). Show that it is possible only if \(m\) and \(n\) are both even or both odd and calculate in how many different ways she can place the trees in the grid.

One term a school ran 20 sessions of an after-school Astronomy Club. Exactly five pupils attended each session and no two students encountered one another over all of the sessions more than once. Prove that no fewer than 20 pupils attended the Astronomy Club at some point during the term.

There is a group of 5 people: Alex, Beatrice, Victor, Gregory and Deborah. Each of them has one of the following codenames: V, W, X, Y, Z. We know that:

Alex is 1 year older than V,

Beatrice is 2 years older than W,

Victor is 3 years older than X,

Gregory is 4 years older than Y.

Who is older and by how much: Deborah or Z?

The total age of a group of 7 people is 332 years. Prove that it is possible to choose three members of this group so that the sum of their ages is no less than 142 years.

In each square of a rectangular table of size \(M \times K\), a number is written. The sum of the numbers in each row and in each column, is 1. Prove that \(M = K\).

30 pupils in years 7 to 11 took part in the creation of 40 maths problems. Every possible pair of pupils in the same year created the same number of problems. Every possible pair of pupils in different years created a different number of problems. How many pupils created exactly one problem?

Is it possible to fill a \(5 \times 5\) table with numbers so that the sum of the numbers in each row is positive and the sum of the numbers in each column is negative?