Problems

Two players are playing a game with a heap of \(100\) rocks, and they take turns removing rocks from the heap. The rules are the following: the first player takes one rock, the second can take either one or two rocks, then the first player can take one, two or three rocks, then the second can take \(1\), \(2\), \(3\) or \(4\) rocks from the pile and so on. That is, on each turn, the players have one more option for the number of rocks that they can take. The one who takes the last rock wins. Who has the winning strategy?

There is a secret gathering of a group of \(n\) aliens in a very dark room. You cannot see anyone in the room, but you hear the following questions.

1. “Is at least one of us a Goop?"

2. “Is the number of Goops amongst us an even number?"

3. “Is the number of Goops amongst us a multiple of 3?"

4. \(\dots\)

5. “Is the number of Goops amongst us a multiple of \(n\)?"

What are all the possible values of \(n\) such that this gathering can happen? Note that each of the \(n\) aliens have asked exactly one question.

You meet a group of \(n\) aliens. The first alien asks “is at least one of us a Goop?", the second alien asks “are at least two of us Goops?", the third asks “are at least three of us Goops?" and so on until the final one says “are at least \(n\) of us Goops?".

How many Goops are there?

Cut a deck of \(4\) cards. Are any of the cards in the same place as they were before?

We have a deck of \(13\) cards from Ace to King. Let Ace be the first card, \(2\) the second card and so on with King being the thirteenth card. How can you swap \(4\) and \(7\) (and leave all other cards where they are) by only switching adjacent pairs of cards?

How many permutations of 13 cards leaves the third card where it started?

Does there exist an irreducible tiling with \(1\times2\) rectangles of a \(6\times 6\) rectangle?

Irreducibly tile a floor with \(1\times2\) tiles in a room that is a \(6\times8\) rectangle.

In the \(6\times7\) large rectangle shown below, how many rectangles are there in total formed by grid lines?

Prove that one can tile the whole plane without spaces and overlaps, using any non self-intersecting quadrilaterals of the same shape. Note: quadrilaterals might not be convex.