This academic year Harry decided not only to attend Maths Circles, but also to join his local Chess Club. Harry’s chess set was very old and some pieces were missing so he ordered a new one. When it arrived, he found out to his surprise that the set consisted of 32 knights of different colours. He was a bit upset but he decided to spend some time on solving the problem he heard on the last Saturday’s Maths Circle session. The task was to find out if it is possible to put more than 30 knights on a chessboard in such a way that they do not attack each other. Do you think it is possible or not?
After listening to Harry’s complaints the delivery service promised him to deliver a very expensive chess set together with some books on chess strategies and puzzles. This week one of the tasks was to put 14 bishops on a chessboard so that they do not attack each other. Harry solved this problem and smiled hoping he is not getting 32 identical bishops this time. Can you solve it?
Colour the plane in red, green and blue in such a way that every line consists of points of at most two colours. Remember that you have to use all three colours.
A young and ambitious software engineer is working on his own basic version of an intelligent personal assistant. The application can only answer closed questions (a closed question is a question that can be answered only ‘yes’ or ‘no’). He installs this application on three mobile devices and runs a set of tests. He discovers there is one unstable device. From time to time the application gives wrong answers, but you cannot really predict when. Being exhausted after unsuccessful attempts to find the mistake in his code, the software engineer goes to sleep. The next morning he cannot remember which device is not working properly. Taking into account that devices are connected to the same server (so normally working applications can detect which one is not always receiving the signal) explain how in two questions the engineer can determine the unstable device. One question is for one device only.
Notice that the square number 1089 \((=33^2)\) has two even and two odd digits in its decimal representation.
(a) Can you find a 6-digit square number with the same property (the number of odd digits equals the number of even digits)?
(b) What about such 100-digit square number?
Bella spent 10 minutes searching for a 3-digit number such that it has the product of it’s digits equal to 26. She examined all 3-digit numbers one by one. Do you think she missed a possible example or is it the case that there are simply no such 3-digit numbers?
Assume you have a chance to play the following game. You need to put numbers in all cells of a \(10\times10\) table so that the sum of numbers in each column is positive and the sum of numbers in each row is negative. Once you put your numbers you cannot change them. You need to pay £1 if you want to play the game and the prize for completing the task is £100. Is it possible to win?
A pencil box contains pencils of different colours and different lengths. Show that it is possible to choose two pencils of both different colours and different lengths.
After proving there are no 3-digit numbers with the product of digits equal to 26 (see Example 1) Bella decided to find a 4-digit number with the product of digits equal to 98. Can she succeed in finding such a number?
Bella was encouraged by the fact that she fully understood the general concept about the existence of a number with given value of product of digits. Therefore, she started thinking about the following problems:
(a) Is there a 3-digit number with the sum of digits equal to 24?
(b) Is there a 4-digit number with the sum of digits equal to 37?
Solve these questions.