Problems

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Found: 584

A gang contains 50 gangsters. The whole gang has never taken part in a raid together, but every possible pair of gangsters has taken part in a raid together exactly once. Prove that one of the gangsters has taken part in no less than 8 different raids.

On every cell of a \(9 \times 9\) board there is a beetle. At the sound of a whistle, every beetle crawls onto one of the diagonally neighbouring cells. Note that, in some cells, there may be more than one beetle, and some cells will be unoccupied.

Prove that there will be at least 9 unoccupied cells.

On the planet Tau Ceti, the landmass takes up more than half the surface area. Prove that the Tau Cetians can drill a hole through the centre of their planet that connects land to land.

We are given 101 natural numbers whose sum is equal to 200. Prove that we can always pick some of these numbers so that the sum of the picked numbers is 100.

10 natural numbers are written on a blackboard. Prove that it is always possible to choose some of these numbers and write “\(+\)” or “\(-\)” between them so that the resulting algebraic sum is divisible by 1001.

There are 101 buttons of 11 different colours. Prove that amongst them there are either 11 buttons of the same colour, or 11 buttons of different colours.

Let \(f (x)\) be a polynomial about which it is known that the equation \(f (x) = x\) has no roots. Prove that then the equation \(f (f (x)) = x\) does not have any roots.