Problems

A cat tries to catch a mouse in labyrinths A, B, and C. The cat walks first, beginning with the node marked with the letter “K”. Then the mouse (from the node “M”) moves, then again the cat moves, etc. From any node the cat and mouse go to any adjacent node. If at some point the cat and mouse are in the same node, then the cat eats the mouse.

Can the cat catch the mouse in each of the cases A, B, C?

Two play a game on a chessboard \(8 \times 8\). The player who makes the first move puts a knight on the board. Then they take turns moving it (according to the usual rules), whilst you can not put the knight on a cell which he already visited. The loser is one who has nowhere to go. Who wins with the right strategy – the first player or his partner?

Two players in turn increase a natural number in such a way that at each increase the difference between the new and old values of the number is greater than zero, but less than the old value. The initial value of the number is 2. The winner is the one who can create the number 1987. Who wins with the correct strategy: the first player or his partner?

a) The vertices (corners) in a regular polygon with 10 sides are colored black and white in an alternating fashion (i.e. one vertex is black, the next is white, etc). Two people play the following game. Each player in turn draws a line connecting two vertices of the same color. These lines must not have common vertices (i.e. must not begin or end on the same dot as another line) with the lines already drawn. The winner of the game is the player who made the final move. Which player, the first or the second, would win if the right strategy is used?

b) The same problem, but for a regular polygon with 12 sides.

Initially, a natural number \(A\) is written on a board. You are allowed to add to it one of its divisors, distinct from itself and one. With the resulting number you are permitted to perform a similar operation, and so on.

Prove that from the number \(A = 4\) one can, with the help of such operations, come to any given in advance composite number.

There is a chocolate bar with five longitudinal and eight transverse grooves, along which it can be broken (in total into \(9 * 6 = 54\) squares). Two players take part, in turns. A player in his turn breaks off the chocolate bar a strip of width 1 and eats it. Another player who plays in his turn does the same with the part that is left, etc. The one who breaks a strip of width 2 into two strips of width 1 eats one of them, and the other is eaten by his partner. Prove that the first player can act in such a way that he will get at least 6 more chocolate squares than the second player.

Two play tic-tac-toe on a \(10 \times 10\) board according to the following rules. First they fill the whole board with noughts and crosses, putting them in turn (the first player puts crosses, their partner – noughts). Then two numbers are counted: \(K\) is the number of five consecutively standing crosses and \(H\) is the number of five consecutively standing zeros. (Five, standing horizontally, vertically and parallel to the diagonal are counted, if there are six crosses in a row, this gives two fives, if there are seven, then three, etc.). The number \(K-H\) is considered to be the winnings of the first player (the losses of the second).

a) Does the first player have a winning strategy?

b) Does the first player have a non-losing strategy?

Initially, on each cell of a \(1 \times n\) board a checker is placed. The first move allows you to move any checker onto an adjacent cell (one of the two, if the checker is not on the edge), so that a column of two pieces is formed. Then one can move each column in any direction by as many cells as there are checkers in it (within the board); if the column is on a non-empty cell, it is placed on a column standing there and unites with it. Prove that in \(n - 1\) moves you can collect all of the checkers on one square.

A game takes place on a squared \(9 \times 9\) piece of checkered paper. Two players play in turns. The first player puts crosses in empty cells, its partner puts noughts. When all the cells are filled, the number of rows and columns in which there are more crosses than zeros is counted, and is denoted by the number \(K\), and the number of rows and columns in which there are more zeros than crosses is denoted by the number \(H\) (18 rows in total). The difference \(B = K - H\) is considered the winnings of the player who goes first. Find a value of B such that

1) the first player can secure a win of no less than \(B\), no matter how the second player played;

2) the second player can always make it so that the first player will receive no more than \(B\), no matter how he plays.

Two people are playing. The first player writes out numbers from left to right, randomly alternating between 0 and 1, until there are 2021 numbers in total. Each time after the first one writes out the next digit, the second switches two numbers from the already written row (when only one digit is written, the second misses its move). Is the second player always able to ensure that, after his last move, the arrangement of the numbers is symmetrical relative to the middle number?