Problems

In Mexico, environmentalists have succeeded in enacting a law whereby every car should not be driven at least one day a week (the owner informs the police about their car registration number and the day of the week when this car will not be driven). In a certain family, all adults want to travel daily (each for their own business!). How many cars (at least) should the family have, if the family has a) 5 adults? b) 8 adults?

Three hedgehogs divided three pieces of cheese of mass of 5g, 8g and 11g. The fox began to help them. It can cut off and eat 1 gram of cheese from any two pieces at the same time. Can the fox leave the hedgehogs equal pieces of cheese?

Ben and Joe play chess. In addition to a chessboard, they have one rook, which they put in the lower right corner, and they move it in turns. It can only be moved upwards or to the left (for any number of cells). The player who can not make a move, loses. Joe goes first. Who will win with the correct method?

Gabby is standing on a river bank. She has two clay jars: one – for 5 litres, and about the second Gabby remembers only that it holds either 3 or 4 litres. Help Gabby determine the capacity of the second jar. (Looking into the jar, you cannot figure out how much water is in it.)

In a physics club, the teacher created the following experiment. He spread out 16 weights of weight 1, 2, 3, ..., 16 grams onto weighing scales, so that one of the bowls outweighed the other. Fifteen students in turn left the classroom and took with them one weight each, and after each student’s departure, the scales changed their position and outweighed the opposite bowl of the scales. What weight could remain on the scales?

A set of weights has the following properties: It contains \(5\) weights, which are all different in weight. For any two weights, there are two other weights of the same total weight. What is the smallest number of weights that can be in this set?

Hannah has a calculator that allows you to multiply a number by 3, add 3 to the number or (4 if the number is divisible by 3 to make a whole number) divide by 3. How can the number 11 be made on this calculator from the number 1?

In the \(4 \times 4\) square, the cells in the left half are painted black, and the rest – in white. In one go, it is allowed to repaint all cells inside any rectangle in the opposite colour. How, in three goes, can one repaint the cells to get the board to look like a chessboard?

In the king’s prison, there are five cells numbered from 1 to 5. In each cell, there is one prisoner. Kristen persuaded the king to conduct an experiment: on the wall of each cell she writes at one point a number and at midnight, each prisoner will go to the cell with the indicated number (if the number on the wall coincides with the cell number, the prisoner does not go anywhere). On the following night at midnight, the prisoners again must move from their cell to another cell according to the instructions on the wall, and they do this for five nights. If the location of prisoners in the cells for all six days (including the first) is never repeated, then Kristen will be given the title of Wisdom, and the prisoners will be released. Help Kristen write numbers in the cells.

At the vertices of the hexagon \(ABCDEF\) (see Fig.) There were 6 identical balls: at \(A\) – one with mass 1 g, at \(B\) – 2 g, ..., at \(F\) – 6 g. Callum changed the places of two balls in opposite vertices. A set of weighing scales with 2 plates is available, which let you know which plate contains the balls of greater mass. How, in one weighing, can it be determined which balls were rearranged?