Problems

Munira wants to put \(6\) books on her shelf, \(4\) of which are red and \(2\) of which are blue. The four red ones are a small paperback, a small hardback, a large paperback and a large hardback. The two blue ones are both paperback, one small and one large. She doesn’t want the two blue ones next to each other. In how many ways can she do this?

Imagine a cube that’s turquoise on the front, pink on top, yellow on the right, white on left, dark blue on back and orange on the bottom. If Arne rotates this \(180^{\circ}\) about the line through the middles of the turquoise and dark blue sides, then does it again, he gets back to the original cube. If Arne rotates this \(90^{\circ}\) about that same line, then does that three more times, then he also gets back to the original cube.
Is there a rotation he could do, and then do twice more, to get back to the original cube?

Arne has a cube which is pink on top and orange on bottom, yellow on right and white on left, turquoise on front and dark blue at the back. He rotates this once so that it looks different. Could he perform the same rotation four more times and get back to the original colouring?

Can you tile the plane with regular octagons?

Sam the magician shuffles his hand of six cards: joker, ace (\(A\)), ten, jack (\(J\)), queen (\(Q\)) and king (\(K\)). After his shuffle, the relative order of joker, \(A\) and \(10\) is now \(A\), \(10\), joker. Also, the relative order of \(J\), \(Q\) and \(K\) is now \(Q\), \(K\) and \(J\).
For example, he could have \(A\), \(Q\), \(10\), joker, \(K\), \(J\) - but not \(A\), \(Q\), \(10\), joker, \(J\), \(K\).

How many choices does Sam has for his shuffle?

Draw how to tile the whole plane with figures, composed from squares \(1\times 1\), \(2\times 2\), \(3\times 3\), \(4\times 4\), and \(5\times 5\) where squares of all sizes are used the same amount of times in the design of the figure.

Four siblings received magic wands for Christmas. It turned out that any three magic wands can form a triangle in such a way that the areas of all four triangles are equal. Are all the magic wands necessarily the same length?

A goat and a cow would take \(45\) days to eat a full cart of hay. It would take a cow and a sheep \(60\) days, but a sheep and a goat would need \(90\) days. How many days would it take for all three animals to eat all the hay?

Anna and Beth played rock paper scissors ten times. Rock beat scissors, scissors beat paper and paper beat rock. Anna used rock three times, scissors six times and paper once. Beth used rock twice, scissors four times and paper four times. None of the ten games was a tie. Who won more games?