A group of several friends was in correspondence in such a way that each letter was received by everyone except for the sender. Each person wrote the same number of letters, as a result of which all together the friends received 440 letters. How many people could be in this group of friends?
Author: A.V. Shapovalov
To the cabin of the cable car leading up to the mountain, four people arrived who weigh 50, 60, 70 and 90 kg. A supervisor does not exist, but the cable car travels back and forth in automatic mode only with a load from 100 to 250 kg (in particular, it does not go anywhere when the cable car is empty), provided that passengers can be seated on two benches so that the weights on the benches differ by no more than 25 kg. How can they all climb the mountain?
Author: N. Medved
Peter and Victoria are playing on a board measuring \(7 \times 7\). They take turns putting the numbers from 1 to 7 in the board cells so that the same number does not appear in one line nor in one column. Peter goes first. The player who loses is the one who cannot make a move. Who of them can win, no matter how the opponent plays?
16 teams took part in a handball tournament where a victory was worth 2 points, a draw – 1 point and a defeat – 0 points. All teams scored a different number of points, and the team that ranked seventh, scored 21 points. Prove that the winning team drew at least once.
In the Republic of mathematicians, the number \(\alpha > 2\) was chosen and coins were issued with denominations of 1 pound, as well as in \(\alpha^k\) pounds for every natural \(k\). In this case \(\alpha\) was chosen so that the value of all the coins, except for the smallest, was irrational. Could it be that any amount of a natural number of pounds can be made with these coins, using coins of each denomination no more than 6 times?
In the isosceles triangle \(ABC\), the angle \(B\) is equal to \(30^{\circ}\), and \(AB = BC = 6\). The height \(CD\) of the triangle \(ABC\) and the height \(DE\) of the triangle \(BDC\) are drawn. Find the length \(BE\).
Authors: B.R. Frenkin, T.V. Kazitcina
On the tree sat 100 parrots of three kinds: green, yellow, multi-coloured. A crow flew past and croaked: “Among you, there are more green parrots than multi-coloured ones!” – “Yes!” – agreed 50 parrots, and the others shouted “No!”. Glad to the dialogue, the crow again croaked: “Among you, there are more multi-coloured parrots than yellow ones!” Again, half of the parrots shouted “Yes!”, and the rest – “No!”. The green parrots both told the truth, the yellow ones lied both times, and each of the multi-coloured ones lied once, and once told the truth. Could there be more yellow than green parrots?
Three players are playing knockout table tennis – that is, the player who loses a game swaps places with the player who did not take part in that game and the winner stays on. In total Andrew played 10 games, Ben played 15, and Charlotte played 17. Which player lost the second game played?
Author: E.V. Bakaev
From the beginning of the academic year, Andrew wrote down his marks for mathematics. When he received another evaluation (2, 3, 4 or 5), he called it unexpected, if before that time this mark was met less often than each of the other possible marks. (For example, if he had received the following marks: 3, 4, 2, 5, 5, 5, 2, 3, 4, 3 from the beginning of the year, the first five and the second four would have been unexpected). For the whole academic year, Andrew received 40 marks - 10 fives, fours, threes and twos (it is not known in which order). Is it possible to say exactly how many marks were unexpected?
On a ring road at regular intervals there are 25 posts, each with a policeman. The police are numbered in some order from 1 to 25. It is required that they cross the road so that there is a policeman on each post, but so that number 2 was clockwise behind number 1, number 3 was clockwise behind number 2, and so on. Prove that if you organised the transition so that the total distance travelled was the smallest, then one of the policemen will remain at his original post.