MOTP Combo P-set

Gunjan Aggarwal
2022

Problem 1. Mr. Fat moves around on the lattice points according to the following
rules: From point ( x, y) he may move to any of the points (y, x ), (3x, −2y), (−2x, 3y),
( x + 1, y + 4) and ( x − 1, y − 4). Show that if he starts at (0, 1) he can never get to (0, 0).

Problem 2. A magician has one hundred cards numbered 1 to 100. He puts them
into three boxes, a red one, a white one and a blue one, so that each box contains at
least one card. A member of the audience draws two cards from two different boxes and
announces the sum of numbers on those cards. Given this information, the magician
locates the box from which no card has been drawn. How many ways are there to put
the cards in the three boxes so that the trick works?

Problem 3. From an 8 × 8 chess board we remove 1 corner cell and 1 random cell.
Prove that we can tile the remaining figure with 31 dominoes if and only if the random
square removes and then corner square are of different colors.

Problem 4. We have 2m sheets of paper, with the number 1 written on each of them.
We perform the following operation. In every step we choose two distinct sheets; if
the numbers on the two sheets are a and b, then we erase these numbers and write the
number a + b on both sheets. Prove that after m2m−1 steps, the sum of the numbers on
all the sheets is at least 4m .

Problem 5. Let n be a positive integer. Each point ( x, y) in the plane, where x and y
are non-negative integers with x + y < n, is coloured red or blue, subject to the following
condition: if a point ( x, y) is red, then so are all points ( x ′ , y′ ) with x ′ ≤ x and y′ ≤ y.
Let A be the number of ways to choose n blue points with distinct x-coordinates, and let
B be the number of ways to choose n blue points with distinct y-coordinates. Prove that
A = B.