Problems

Age
Difficulty
Found: 9

Two players in turn put coins on a round table, in such a way that they do not overlap. The player who can not make a move loses.

Two people play the following game. Each player in turn rubs out 9 numbers (at his choice) from the sequence \(1, 2, \dots , 100, 101\). After eleven such deletions, 2 numbers will remain. The first player is awarded so many points, as is the difference between these remaining numbers. Prove that the first player can always score at least 55 points, no matter how played the second.

On a board of size \(8 \times 8\), two in turn colour the cells so that there are no corners of three coloured squares. The player who can’t make a move loses. Who wins with the right strategy?

Two boys play the following game: they take turns placing rooks on a chessboard. The one who wins is the one whose last move leaves all the board cells filled. Who wins if both try to play with the best possible strategy?

A daisy has a) 12 petals; b) 11 petals. Consider the game with two players where: in one turn a player is allowed to remove either exactly one petal or two petals which are next to each other. The loser is the one who cannot make a turn. How should the second player act, in cases a) and b), in order to win the game regardless of the moves of the first player?

On the board the number 1 is written. Two players in turn add any number from 1 to 5 to the number on the board and write down the total instead. The player who first makes the number thirty on the board wins. Specify a winning strategy for the second player.

There are two stacks of coins on a table: in one of them there are 30 coins, and in the other – 20. You can take any number of coins from one stack per move. The player who cannot make a move is the one that loses. Which player wins with the correct strategy?

In the first pile there are 100 sweets and in the second there are 200. Consider the game with two players where: in one turn a player can take any amount of sweets from one of the piles. The winner is the one who takes the last sweet. Which player would win by using the correct strategy?

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.