Problems

Age
Difficulty
Found: 1979

Each of the three cutlets should be fried in a pan on both sides for five minutes each side. Only two cutlets can fit onto the frying pan. Is it possible to fry all three cutlets more quickly than in 20 minutes (if the time to turn over and transfer the cutlets is neglected)?

A standard chessboard has more than a quarter of its squares filled with chess pieces. Prove that at least two adjacent squares, either horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, are occupied somewhere on the board.

There are 18 sweets in one piles, and 23 in another. Two play a game: in one go one can eat one pile of sweets, and the other can be divided into two piles. The loser is one who cannot make a move, i.e. before this player’s turn there are two piles of sweets with one sweet in each. Who wins with a regular game?

In a communication system consisting of 2001 subscribers, each subscriber is connected with exactly \(n\) others. Determine all the possible values of \(n\).

There are two purses and one coin. Inside the first purse is one coin, and inside the second purse is one coin. How can this be?

A hostess bakes a cake for some guests. Either 10 or 11 people can come to her house. What is the smallest number of pieces she needs to cut the cake into (in advance) so that it can be divided equally between 10 and 11 guests?

A raisin bag contains 2001 raisins with a total weight of 1001 g, and no raisin weighs more than 1.002 g.

Prove that all the raisins can be divided onto two scales so that they show a difference in weight not exceeding 1 g.

The following text is obtained by encoding the original message using Caesar Cipher.

WKHVLAWKROBPSLDGRIFUBSWRJUDSKBGHGLFDWHGWKHWRILIWLHWKBHDURIWKHEULWLVKVHFUHWVHUYLFH.

The following text is also obtained from the same original text:

KYVJZOKYFCPDGZRUFWTIPGKFXIRGYPUVUZTRKVUKYVKFWZWKZVKYPVRIFWKYVSIZKZJYJVTIVKJVIMZTV.

Father Christmas has an infinite number of sweets. A minute before the New Year, Father Christmas gives some children 100 sweets, while the Snow Maiden takes one sweet from them. Within half a minute before the New Year, Father Christmas gives the children 100 more sweets, and the Snow Maiden again takes one sweet. The same is repeated for 15 seconds, for 7.5 seconds, etc. until the new Year. Prove that the Snow Maiden will be able to take away all the sweets from the children by the New Year.