Problems

Age
Difficulty
Found: 1967

A carpet of size 4 m by 4 m has had 15 holes made in it by a moth. Is it always possible to cut out a 1 m \(\times\) 1 m area of carpet that doesn’t contain any holes? The holes are considered to be points.

The natural number \(a\) was increased by 1, and its square increased by 1001. What is \(a\)?

In a basket, there are 30 red and green apples. Among any 12 apples there is at least one red one, and among any 20 apples there is at least one green one. How many red apples and how many green apples are there in the basket?

In the numbers of MEXAILO and LOMONOSOV, each letter denotes a number (different letters correspond to different numbers). It is known that the products of the numbers of these two words are equal. Can both numbers be odd?

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?

A game with 25 coins. In a row there are 25 coins. For a turn it is allowed to take one or two neighbouring coins. The player who has nothing to take loses.

There are three piles of rocks: in the first pile there are 10 rocks, 15 in the second pile and 20 in the third pile. In this game (with two players), in one turn a player is allowed to divide one of the piles into two smaller piles. The loser is the one who cannot make a move. Which player would be the winner?

In the first pile there are 100 sweets and in the second there are 200. Consider the game with two players where: in one turn a player can take any amount of sweets from one of the piles. The winner is the one who takes the last sweet. Which player would win by using the correct strategy?