Problems

Age
Difficulty
Found: 1912

100 children were each given a bowl with 100 pieces of pasta. However, these children did not want to eat and instead started to play. One of the children started to place one piece of her pasta into other children’s bowls (to whomever she wants). What is the least amount of transfers needed so that everyone has a different number of pieces of pasta in their bowl?

Hannah Montana wants to leave the round room which has six doors, five of which are locked. In one attempt she can check any three doors, and if one of them is not locked, then she will go through it. After each attempt her friend Michelle locks the door, which was opened, and unlocks one of the neighbouring doors. Hannah does not know which one exactly. How should she act in order to leave the room?

There are 30 students in a class: excellent students, mediocre students and slackers. Excellent students answer all questions correctly, slackers are always wrong, and the mediocre students answer questions alternating one by one correctly and incorrectly. All the students were asked three questions: “Are you an excellent pupil?”, “Are you a mediocre student?”, “Are you a slacker?”. 19 students answered “Yes” to the first question, to the second 12 students answered yes, to the third 9 students answered yes. How many mediocre students study in this class?

100 switched on and 100 switched off lights are randomly arranged in two boxes. Each flashlight has a button, the button of which turns off an illuminated flashlight and switches on a turned off flashlight. Your eyes are closed and you can not see if the flashlight is on. But you can move the flashlights from a box to another box and press the buttons on them. Think of a way to ensure that the burning flashlights in the boxes are equally split.

Replace the letters with numbers (all digits must be different) so that the correct equality is obtained: \(A/ B/ C + D/ E/ F + G/ H/ I = 1\).

A tennis tournament takes place in a sports club. The rules of this tournament are as follows. The loser of the tennis match is eliminated (there are no draws in tennis). The pair of players for the next match is determined by a coin toss. The first match is judged by an external judge, and every other match must be judged by a member of the club who did not participate in the match and did not judge earlier. Could it be that there is no one to judge the next match?

10 children were each given a bowl with 100 pieces of pasta. However, these children did not want to eat and instead started to play. One of the children started to place one piece of pasta into every other child’s bowl. What is the least amount of transfers needed so that everyone has a different number of pieces of pasta in their bowl?

A pharmacist has three weights, with which he measured out and gave 100 g of iodine to one buyer, 101 g of honey to another, and 102 g of hydrogen peroxide to the third. He always placed the weights on one side of the scales, and the goods on the other. Could it be that each weight used is lighter than 90 grams?

Once upon a time there were twenty spies. Each of them wrote an accusation against ten of his colleagues. Prove that at least ten pairs of spies have told on each other.

Fred chose 2017 (not necessarily different) natural numbers \(a_1, a_2, \dots , a_{2017}\) and plays by himself in the following game. Initially, he has an unlimited supply of stones and 2017 large empty boxes. In one move Fred adds a1 stones to any box (at his choice), in any of the remaining boxes (of his choice) – \(a_2\) stones, ..., finally, in the remaining box – \(a_{2017}\) stones. His purpose is to ensure that eventually all the boxes have an equal number of stones. Could he have chosen the numbers so that the goal could be achieved in 43 moves, but is impossible for a smaller non-zero number of moves?