Problems

Age
Difficulty
Found: 2588

In a bookcase, there are four volumes of the collected works of Astrid Lindgren, with each volume containing 200 pages. A worm who lives on this bookshelf has gnawed its way from the first page of the first volume to the last page of the fourth volume. Through how many pages has the worm gnawed its way through?

There are some incorrect weighing scales, a bag of cereal and a correct weight of 1 kg. How can you weigh on these scales 1 kg of cereals?

Can there exist two functions \(f\) and \(g\) that take only integer values such that for any integer \(x\) the following relations hold:

a) \(f (f (x)) = x\), \(g (g (x)) = x\), \(f (g (x)) > x\), \(g (f (x)) > x\)?

b) \(f (f (x)) < x\), \(g (g (x)) < x\), \(f (g (x)) > x\), \(g (f (x)) > x\)?

Michael thinks of a number no less than \(1\) and no greater than \(1000\). Victoria is only allowed to ask questions to which Michael can answer “yes” or “no” (Michael always tells the truth). Can Victoria figure out which number Michael thought of by asking \(10\) questions?

Can the equality \(K \times O \times T = U \times W \times E \times N \times H \times Y\) be true if the numbers from 1 to 9 are substituted for the letters? Different letters correspond to different numbers.

Deep in a forest there is a small town of talking animals. Elephant, Crocodile, Rabbit, Monkey, Bear, Heron and Fox are friends. They each have a landline telephone and each two telephones are connected by a wire. How many wires were required?

In a room, there are 85 balloons – red and blue ones. It is known that: 1) at least one of the balls is red, 2) from each arbitrarily chosen pair of balls at least one is blue. How many red balls are there in the room?

Liz is 8 years older than Natasha. Two years ago Liz’s age was 3 times greater than Natasha’s. How old is Liz?

When Gulliver came to Lilliput, he found that there all things were exactly 12 times shorter than in his homeland. Can you say how many Lilliputian matchboxes fit into one of Gulliver’s matchboxes?

There are 6 locked suitcases and 6 keys to them. At the same time, it is not known to which suitcase each key fits. What is the smallest number of attempts you need to make in order to open all the suitcases for sure? And how many attempts will it take there are not 6 but 10 keys and suitcases?