How can one measure out 15 minutes, using an hourglass of 7 minutes and 11 minutes?
There are three sets of dominoes of different colours. How can you put the dominoes from all three sets into a chain (according to the rules of the game) so that every two neighbouring dominoes are of a different colour?
On every cell of a \(9 \times 9\) board there is a beetle. At the sound of a whistle, every beetle crawls onto one of the diagonally neighbouring cells. Note that, in some cells, there may be more than one beetle, and some cells will be unoccupied.
Prove that there will be at least 9 unoccupied cells.
Two boys play the following game: they take turns placing rooks on a chessboard. The one who wins is the one whose last move leaves all the board cells filled. Who wins if both try to play with the best possible strategy?
On the planet Tau Ceti, the landmass takes up more than half the surface area. Prove that the Tau Cetians can drill a hole through the centre of their planet that connects land to land.
A traveller who came to the planet hired a local as a guide. They went for a walk and saw another alien. The traveller sent the guide to find out to whether this native is a liar or truth teller. The guide returned and said: “The native says that they are a truth teller.” Who was the guide: a liar or a truth teller?
Prove that if \(a, b, c\) are odd numbers, then at least one of the numbers \(ab-1\), \(bc-1\), \(ca-1\) is divisible by 4.
In a basket there are 13 apples. There are scales, with which you can find out the total weight of any two apples. Think of a way to find out from 8 weighings the total weight of all the apples.
We are given 101 natural numbers whose sum is equal to 200. Prove that we can always pick some of these numbers so that the sum of the picked numbers is 100.
10 natural numbers are written on a blackboard. Prove that it is always possible to choose some of these numbers and write “\(+\)” or “\(-\)” between them so that the resulting algebraic sum is divisible by 1001.