Problems

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Several stones weigh 10 tons together, each weighing not more than 1 ton.

a) Prove that this load can be taken away in one go on five three-ton trucks.

b) Give an example of a set of stones satisfying the condition for which four three-ton trucks may not be enough to take the load away in one go.

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?

On a plane there are 100 sheep-points and one wolf-point. In one move, the wolf moves by no more than 1, after which one of the sheep moves by a distance of no more than 1, after that the wolf again moves, etc. At any initial location of the points, will a wolf be able to catch one of the sheep?

Every evening Ross arrives at a random time to the bus stop. Two bus routes stop at this bus stop. One of the routes takes Ross home, and the other takes him to visit his friend Rachel. Ross is waiting for the first bus and depending on which bus arrives, he goes either home or to his friend’s house. After a while, Ross noticed that he is twice as likely to visit Rachel than to be at home. Based on this, Ross concludes that one of the buses runs twice as often as the other. Is he right? Can buses run at the same frequency when the condition of the task is met? (It is assumed that buses do not run randomly, but on a certain schedule).

The planet has \(n\) residents, some are liars and some are truth tellers. Each resident said: “Among the remaining residents of the island, more than half are liars.” How many liars are on the island?

A \(99 \times 99\) chequered table is given, each cell of which is painted black or white. It is allowed (at the same time) to repaint all of the cells of a certain column or row in the colour of the majority of cells in that row or column. Is it always possible to have that all of the cells in the table are painted in the same colour?

10 guests came to a party and each left a pair of shoes in the corridor (all guests have the same shoes). All pairs of shoes are of different sizes. The guests began to disperse one by one, putting on any pair of shoes that they could fit into (that is, each guest could wear a pair of shoes no smaller than his own). At some point, it was discovered that none of the remaining guests could find a pair of shoes so that they could leave. What was the maximum number of remaining guests?

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?