Problems

There are 13 weights. It is known that any 12 of them could be placed in 2 scale cups with 6 weights in each cup in such a way that balance will be held.

Prove the mass of all the weights is the same, if it is known that:

a) the mass of each weight in grams is an integer;

b) the mass of each weight in grams is a rational number;

c) the mass of each weight could be any real (not negative) number.

I don’t know how the figure below can be made of several \(1\times5\) rectangles which do not overlap. I am willing to pay \(1\) pound if you show me a possible way of doing that which I have not seen before. What is the maximal amount of money a person can earn by solving this problem?

17 squares are marked on an \(8\times 8\) chessboard. In chess a knight can move horizontally or vertically, one space then two or two spaces then one – eg: two down and one across, or one down and two across. Prove that it is always possible to pick two of these squares so that a knight would need no less than three moves to get from one to the other.

There is a counter on the chessboard. Two in turn move the counter to an adjacent on one side cell. It is forbidden to put a counter on a cell, which it has already visited. The one who can not make the next turn loses. Who wins with the right strategy?

Can you cover a \(10 \times 10\) board using only \(T\)-shaped tetrominos?

There are \(100\) people standing in line, and one of them is Arthur. Everyone in the line is either a knight, who always tells the truth, or a liar who always lies. Everyone except Arthur said, "There are exactly two liars between Arthur and me." How many liars are there in this line, if it is known that Arthur is a knight?

We wish to paint the \(15\) segments in the picture below in three colours. We want it such that no two segments of the same colour have a common end. For example, you cannot have both \(AB\) and \(BC\) blue since they share the end \(B\). Is such a painting possible?

There are infinitely many couples at a party. Each pair is separated to form two queues of people, where each person is standing next to their partner. Suppose the queue on the left has the property that every nonempty collection of people has a person (from the collection) standing in front of everyone else from that collection. A jester comes into the room and joins the right queue at the back after the two queues are formed.

Each person in the right queue would like to shake hand with a person in the left queue. However, no two of them would like to shake hand with the same person in the left queue. If \(p\) is standing behind \(q\) in the right queue, \(p\) will only shake hand with someone standing behind \(q\)’s handshake partner. Show that it is impossible to shake hands without leaving out someone from the left queue.

Four different digits are given. We use each of them exactly once to construct the largest possible four-digit number. We also use each of them exactly once to construct the smallest possible four-digit number which does not start with 0. If the sum of these two numbers is 10477, what are the given digits?

You may remember the game Nim. We will now play a slightly modified version, called Thrim. In Thrim, there are two piles of stones (or any objects of your choosing), one of size \(1\) and the other of size \(5\).
Whoever takes the last stone wins. The players take it in turns to remove stones - they can only remove stones from one pile at a time, and they can remove at most \(3\) stones at a time.
Does the player going first or the player going second have a winning strategy?