Problems

Age
Difficulty
Found: 1969

A hostess bakes a cake for some guests. Either 10 or 11 people can come to her house. What is the smallest number of pieces she needs to cut the cake into (in advance) so that it can be divided equally between 10 and 11 guests?

Father Christmas has an infinite number of sweets. A minute before the New Year, Father Christmas gives some children 100 sweets, while the Snow Maiden takes one sweet from them. Within half a minute before the New Year, Father Christmas gives the children 100 more sweets, and the Snow Maiden again takes one sweet. The same is repeated for 15 seconds, for 7.5 seconds, etc. until the new Year. Prove that the Snow Maiden will be able to take away all the sweets from the children by the New Year.

What weights can three weights have so that they can weigh any integer number of kilograms from 1 to 10 on weighing scales (weights can be put on both cups)? Give an example.

The rook stands on the square a1 of a chessboard. For a move, you can move it by any number of cells to the right or up. The one who puts the rook on the h8 square will win. Who wins with the right strategy?

Let \(x\) be a natural number. Among the statements:

\(2x\) is more than 70;

\(x\) is less than 100;

\(3x\) is greater than 25;

\(x\) is not less than 10;

\(x\) is greater than 5;

three are true and two are false. What is \(x\)?

It is known that any person has at most 400,000 hairs on their head. Given that the population of London is not less than 8 million, prove that there are 20 Londoners with the same number of hairs on their heads.

Hannah has 10 employees. Each month, Hannah raises the salary by 1 pound of exactly nine of her employees (of her choice). How can Hannah raise the salaries to make them equal? (Salaries are an integer number of pounds.)

Three friends decide, by a coin toss, who goes to get the juice. They have one coin. How do they arrange coin tosses so that all of them have equal chances to not have to go and get the juice?

26 numbers are chosen from the numbers 1, 2, 3, ..., 49, 50. Will there always be two numbers chosen whose difference is 1?

A message is encrypted by replacing the letters of the source text with pairs of digits according to some table (known only to the sender and receiver) in which different letters of the alphabet correspond to different pairs of digits. The cryptographer was given the task to restore the encrypted text. In which case will it be easier for him to perform the task: if it is known that the first word of the second line is a “thermometer” or that the first word of the third line is “smother”? Justify your answer. (It is assumed that the cryptographic table is not known).