On the school board a chairman is chosen. There are four candidates: \(A\), \(B\), \(C\) and \(D\). A special procedure is proposed – each member of the council writes down on a special sheet of candidates the order of his preferences. For example, the sequence \(ACDB\) means that the councilor puts \(A\) in the first place, does not object very much to \(C\), and believes that he is better than \(D\), but least of all would like to see \(B\). Being placed in first place gives the candidate 3 points, the second – 2 points, the third – 1 point, and the fourth - 0 points. After collecting all the sheets, the election commission summarizes the points for each candidate. The winner is the one who has the most points.
After the vote, \(C\) (who scored fewer points than everyone) withdrew his candidacy in connection with his transition to another school. They did not vote again, but simply crossed out \(B\) from all the leaflets. In each sheet there are three candidates left. Therefore, first place was worth 2 points, the second – 1 point, and the third – 0 points. The points were summed up anew.
Could it be that the candidate who previously had the most points, after the self-withdrawal of \(B\) received the fewest points?
Four outwardly identical coins weigh 1, 2, 3 and 4 grams respectively.
Is it possible to find out in four weighings on a set of scales without weights, which one weighs how much?
There was a football match of 10 versus 10 players between a team of liars (who always lie) and a team of truth-tellers (who always tell the truth). After the match, each player was asked: “How many goals did you score?” Some participants answered “one”, Callum said “two”, some answered “three”, and the rest said “five”. Is Callum lying if it is known that the truth-tellers won with a score of 20:17?
There are 13 weights, each weighing an integer number of grams. It is known that any 12 of them can be divided into two cups of weights, six weights on each one, which will come to equilibrium. Prove that all the weights have the same weight.
The White Rook pursues a black horse on a board of \(3 \times 1969\) cells (they walk in turn according to the usual rules). How should the rook play in order to take the horse? White makes the first move.
The judges of an Olympiad decided to denote each participant with a natural number in such a way that it would be possible to unambiguously reconstruct the number of points received by each participant in each task, and that from each two participants the one with the greater number would be the participant which received a higher score. Help the judges solve this problem!
Two play a game on a chessboard \(8 \times 8\). The player who makes the first move puts a knight on the board. Then they take turns moving it (according to the usual rules), whilst you can not put the knight on a cell which he already visited. The loser is one who has nowhere to go. Who wins with the right strategy – the first player or his partner?
This academic year Harry decided not only to attend Maths Circles, but also to join his local Chess Club. Harry’s chess set was very old and some pieces were missing so he ordered a new one. When it arrived, he found out to his surprise that the set consisted of 32 knights of different colours. He was a bit upset but he decided to spend some time on solving the problem he heard on the last Saturday’s Maths Circle session. The task was to find out if it is possible to put more than 30 knights on a chessboard in such a way that they do not attack each other. Do you think it is possible or not?
After listening to Harry’s complaints the delivery service promised him to deliver a very expensive chess set together with some books on chess strategies and puzzles. This week one of the tasks was to put 14 bishops on a chessboard so that they do not attack each other. Harry solved this problem and smiled hoping he is not getting 32 identical bishops this time. Can you solve it?
On the way back from his weekly maths circle Harry created the following puzzle:
Put 48 rooks on a \(10\times10\) board so that each rook attacks only 2 or 4 empty cells.
When he showed this problem to the teachers next Saturday they were very impressed and decided to include it in the next problem set. Try to find a suitable placement of rooks.