Problems

When Gulliver came to Lilliput, he found that everything was exactly 12 times shorter than in his homeland. Can you say how many Lilliputian matchboxes fit into the matchbox of Gulliver?

A page of a calendar is partially covered by the previous torn sheet (see the figure). The vertices A and B of the upper sheet lie on the sides of the bottom sheet. The fourth vertex of the lower leaf is not visible – it is covered by the top sheet. The upper and lower pages, of course, are identical in size to each other. Which part of the lower page is greater, that which is covered or that which is not?

A square piece of paper is cut into 6 pieces, each of which is a convex polygon. 5 of the pieces are lost, leaving only one piece in the form of a regular octagon (see the drawing). Is it possible to reconstruct the original square using just this information?

A cube with a side of 1 m was sawn into cubes with a side of 1 cm and they were in a row (along a straight line). How long was the line?

In some country there are 101 cities, and some of them are connected by roads. However, every two cities are connected by exactly one path.

How many roads are there in this country?

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.

In a regular shape with 25 vertices, all the diagonals are drawn.

Prove that there are no nine diagonals passing through one interior point of the shape.

A square is cut by 18 straight lines, 9 of which are parallel to one side of the square and the other 9 parallel to the other – perpendicular to the first 9 – dividing the square into 100 rectangles. It turns out that exactly 9 of these rectangles are squares. Prove that among these 9 squares there will be two that are identical.

The population of China is one billion people. It would seem that on a map of China with a scale of 1 : 1,000,000 (1 cm : 10 km), it would be possible to fit a million times fewer people than there is in the whole country. However, in fact, not only 1000, but even 100 people will not be able to be placed on this map. Can you explain this contradiction?

Abigail’s little brother Carson found a big rectangular cake in the fridge and cut a small rectangular piece out of it.

Now Abigail needs to find a way to cut the remaining cake into two pieces of equal area with only one straight cut. How could she do that? The removed piece can be of any size or orientation.