A professional tennis player plays at least one match each day for training purposes. However in order to ensure he does not over-exert himself he plays no more than 12 matches a week. Prove that it is possible to find a group of consecutive days during which the player plays a total of 20 matches.
A country is called a Fiver if, in it, each city is connected by airlines with exactly with five other cities (there are no international flights).
a) Draw a scheme of airlines for a country that is made up of 10 cities.
b) How many airlines are there in a country of 50 cities?
c) Can there be a Fiver country, in which there are exactly 46 airlines?
Prove that if the irreducible rational fraction \(p/q\) is a root of the polynomial \(P (x)\) with integer coefficients, then \(P (x) = (qx - p) Q (x)\), where the polynomial \(Q (x)\) also has integer coefficients.
100 fare evaders want to take a train, consisting of 12 coaches, from the first to the 76th station. They know that at the first station two ticket inspectors will board two coaches. After the 4th station, in the time between each station, one of the ticket inspectors will cross to a neighbouring coach. The ticket inspectors take turns to do this. A fare evader can see a ticket inspector only if the ticket inspector is in the next coach or the next but one coach. At each station each fare evader has time to run along the platform the length of no more than three coaches – for example at a station a fare evader in the 7th coach can run to any coach between the 4th and 10th inclusive and board it. What is the largest number of fare evaders that can travel their entire journey without ever ending up in the same coach as one of the ticket inspectors, no matter how the ticket inspectors choose to move? The fare evaders have no information about the ticket inspectors beyond that which is given here, and they agree their strategy before boarding.
A road of length 1 km is lit with streetlights. Each streetlight illuminates a stretch of road of length 1 m. What is the maximum number of streetlights that there could be along the road, if it is known that when any single streetlight is extinguished the street will no longer be fully illuminated?
15 MPs take part in a debate. During the debate, each one criticises exactly \(k\) of the 14 other contributors. For what minimum value of \(k\) is it possible to definitively state that there will be two MPs who have criticised one another?
In the number \(1234096\dots\) each digit, starting with the 5th digit is equal to the final digit of the sum of the previous 4 digits. Will the digits 8123 ever occur in that order in a row in this number?
7 natural numbers are written around the edges of a circle. It is known that in each pair of adjacent numbers one is divisible by the other. Prove that there will be another pair of numbers that are not adjacent that share this property.
There are 7 points placed inside a regular hexagon of side length 1 unit. Prove that among the points there are two which are less than 1 unit apart.
Is it possible to transport 50 stone blocks, whose masses are equal to \(370, 372,\dots, 468\) kg, from a quarry on seven 3-tonne trucks?