Problems

Age
Difficulty
Found: 1967

A magician with a blindfold gives a spectator five cards with the numbers from 1 to 5 written on them. The spectator hides two cards, and gives the other three to the assistant magician. The assistant indicates to the spectator two of them, and the spectator then calls out the numbers of these cards to the magician (in the order in which he wants). After that, the magician guesses the numbers of the cards hidden by the spectator. How can the magician and the assistant make sure that the trick always works?

In 10 boxes there are pencils (there are no empty boxes). It is known that in different boxes there is a different number of pencils, and in each box, all pencils are of different colors. Prove that from each box you can choose a pencil so that they will all be of different colors.

A block of cheese comes in packaging with parallel lines of different colours printed on it. If you cut along the red lines then you will get 5 slices of cheese, if you cut along the yellow lines then there will be 7 slices, and along the green lines you will get 11 slices. How many slices will you get if you cut along the lines of all three colours?

In Neverland, only elves and gnomes live. Gnomes lie about their gold, but in any other instances they tell the truth. Elves lie when talking about gnomes, but in other instances they tell the truth. One day two neverlandians said:

\(A\): All my gold I stole from the Dragon.

\(B\): You’re lying.

Determine whether each of them is an elf or a gnome.

Hannah has a calculator that allows you to multiply a number by 3, add 3 to the number or (4 if the number is divisible by 3 to make a whole number) divide by 3. How can the number 11 be made on this calculator from the number 1?

A game of ’Battleships’ has a fleet consisting of one \(1\times 4\) square, two \(1\times 3\) squares, three \(1\times 2\) squares, and four \(1\times 1\) squares. It is easy to distribute the fleet of ships on a \(10\times 10\) board, see the example below. What is the smallest square board on which this fleet can be placed? Note that by the rules of the game, no two ships can be placed on horizontally, vertically, or diagonally adjacent squares.
image

In the \(4 \times 4\) square, the cells in the left half are painted black, and the rest – in white. In one go, it is allowed to repaint all cells inside any rectangle in the opposite colour. How, in three goes, can one repaint the cells to get the board to look like a chessboard?

The product of two natural numbers, each of which is not divisible by 10, is equal to 1000. Find the sum of these two numbers.

10 children, including Billy, attended Billy’s birthday party. It turns out that any two children picked from those at the party share a grandfather. Prove that 7 of the children share a grandfather.