Problems

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Several football teams are taking part in a football tournament, where each team plays every other team exactly once. Prove that at any point in the tournament there will be two teams who have played exactly the same number of matches up to that point.

a) What is the maximum number of squares on an \(8\times 8\) grid that can be shaded in with a black pen such that each ‘L’ shaped group of 3 squares has at least one unshaded square.

b) What is the maximum number of squares on an \(8\times 8\) grid that can be shaded in with a black pen, such that each ‘L’ shaped group of 3 squares has at least one shaded square.

A \(3\times 3\) square is filled with the numbers \(-1, 0, +1\). Prove that two of the 8 sums in all directions – each row, column, and diagonal – will be equal.

The numbers \(1, 2, \dots , 9\) are divided into three groups. Prove that the product of the numbers in one of the groups will always be no less than 72.

Some whole numbers are placed into a \(10\times 10\) table, so that the difference between any two neighbouring, horizontally or vertically adjacent, squares is no greater than 5. Prove that there will always be two identical numbers in the table.