An abstract artist took a wooden \(5\times 5\times 5\) cube and divided each face into unit squares. He painted each square in one of three colours – black, white, and red – so that there were no horizontally or vertically adjacent squares of the same colour. What is the smallest possible number of squares the artist could have painted black following this rule? Unit squares which share a side are considered adjacent both when the squares lie on the same face and when they lie on adjacent faces.
The numbers \(1, 2, 3, \dots , 99\) are written onto 99 blank cards in order. The cards are then shuffled and then spread in a row face down. The numbers \(1, 2, 3, \dots, 99\) are once more written onto in the blank side of the cards in order. For each card the numbers written on it are then added together. The 99 resulting summations are then multiplied together. Prove that the result will be an even number.
On an island there are 1,234 residents, each of whom is either a knight (who always tells the truth) or a liar (who always lies). One day, all of the inhabitants of the island were broken up into pairs, and each one said: “He is a knight!" or “He is a liar!" about his partner. Could it eventually turn out to be that the number of “He is a knight!" and “He is a liar!" phrases is the same?
Two classes with the same number of students took a test. Having checked the test, the strict teacher Mr Jones said that he gave out 13 more twos than other marks (where the marks range from 2 to 5 and 5 is the highest). Was Mr Jones right?
Are the sum and product odd or even for:
a) two even numbers?
b) two odd numbers?
c) an odd and an even number?