Problems

Age
Difficulty
Found: 1979

The parliament of a certain country has two houses with an equal number of members. In order to make a decision on an important issue all the members voted and there were no abstentions. When the chairman announced that the decision had been taken with a 23-vote advantage, the opposition leader declared that the results had been rigged. How did he know it?

Among some number of mathematicians, every seventh is a philosopher, and among some number of philosophers every ninth is a mathematician. Who are there more of: philosophers or mathematicians?

Know-it-all came to visit the twin brothers Screw and Nut, knowing that one of them never speaks the truth, and asked one of them: “Are you Screw?”. “Yes,” he replied. When Know-it-all asked the second brother the same question, he received an equally clear answer and immediately determined who was who.

Who was called Screw?

A resident of one foreign intelligence agency informed the centre about the forthcoming signing of a number of bilateral agreements between the fifteen former republics of the USSR. According to his report, each of them will conclude an agreement exactly with three others. Should this resident be trusted?

Uncle Jack, the cat Whiskers, Spot and postman Pat are sitting on a bench. If Spot, sitting to the right of everyone, sits between Uncle Jack and the cat, then the cat will be at the extreme left. In what order do they sit?

Cut a square into three pieces, from which you can construct a triangle with three acute angles and three different sides.

In any group of 10 children, out of a total of 60 pupils, there will be three who are in the same class. Will it always be the case that amongst the 60 pupils there will be: 1) 15 classmates? 2) 16 classmates?

A pedestrian walked along six streets of one city, passing each street exactly twice, but could not get around them, having passed each one only once. Could this be?

When Harvey was asked to come up with a problem for the mathematical Olympiad in Sunny City, he wrote a rebus (see the drawing). Can it be solved? (Different letters must match different numbers).

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