Problems

Age
Difficulty
Found: 584

What is the minimum number of \(1\times 1\) squares that need to be drawn in order to get an image of a \(25\times 25\) square divided into 625 smaller 1x1 squares?

What is the smallest number of cells that can be chosen on a \(15\times15\) board so that a mouse positioned on any cell on the board touches at least two marked cells? (The mouse also touches the cell on which it stands.)

There are 40 identical cords. If you set any cord on fire on one side, it burns, and if you set it alight on the other side, it will not burn. Ahmed arranges the cords in the form of a square (see the figure below, each cord makes up a side of a cell). Then, Helen arranges 12 fuses. Will Ahmed be able to lay out the cords in such a way that Helen will not be able to burn all of them?

A box contains 111 red, blue, green, and white marbles. It is known that if we remove 100 marbles from the box, without looking, we will always have removed at least one marble of each colour. What is the minimum number of marbles we need to remove to guarantee that we have removed marbles of 3 different colours?

A box contains 100 red, blue, and white marbles. It is known that if we remove 26 marbles from the box, without looking, we will always have removed at least 10 marbles of one colour. What is the minimum number of marbles we need to remove to guarantee that we have removed 30 marbles of the same colour?

Harry thought of two positive numbers \(x\) and \(y\). He wrote down the numbers \(x + y\), \(x - y\), \(xy\) and \(x/y\) on a board and showed them to Sam, but did not say which number corresponded to which operation.

Prove that Sam can uniquely figure out \(x\) and \(y\).

When 200 sweets are randomly distributed to a class of schoolchildren, there will always be at least two children who receive the same number of sweets or even no sweets at all. What is the minimum number of children in this class?

A mix of boys and girls are standing in a circle. There are 20 children in total. It is known that each boys’ neighbour in the clockwise direction is a child wearing a blue T-shirt, and that each girls’ neighbour in the anticlockwise direction is a child wearing a red T-shirt. Is it possible to uniquely determine how many boys there are in the circle?