Problems

Age
Difficulty
Found: 1969

One term a school ran 20 sessions of an after-school Astronomy Club. Exactly five pupils attended each session and no two students encountered one another over all of the sessions more than once. Prove that no fewer than 20 pupils attended the Astronomy Club at some point during the term.

In two purses lie two coins, and one purse has twice as many coins as the other. How can this be?

Alex laid out an example of an addition of numbers from cards with numbers on them and then swapped two cards. As you can see, the equality has been violated. Which cards did Alex rearrange?

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Cut the board shown in the figure into four congruent parts so that each of them contains three shaded cells. Where the shaded cells are placed in each part need not be the same.
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Which rectangles with whole sides are there more of: with perimeter of 1996 or with perimeter of 1998? (The rectangles \(a \times b\) and \(b \times a\) are assumed to be the same).

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?

A globe has 17 parallels and 24 meridians. How many parts is the globe’s surface divided into? The meridian is an arc connecting the North Pole with the South Pole. A parallel is a circle parallel to the equator (the equator is also a parallel).

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?

Cut the trapezium \(ABCD\) into two parts which you can use to construct a triangle.

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