Asian MathSci League, Inc (AMSLI)

Website: amsliphil.com
Email address: amsliphil@yahoo.com
Contact Nos: +632-9254526

AIEP Send-off Training 2022

Session 3 Middle School
Problem Solving
1. Beaver Tables. A beaver has a small table for 6 chairs.

However, the small table is too small for a big family. So, he decided to build a bigger table
by joining small tables in the following way:

If the beaver puts 25 small tables, how many chairs would it need?

2. Card Generator. Milan and Maya completed a survey

with 4 questions. Milan’s answers were:

Question 1: Answer A
Question 2: Answer C
Question 3: Answer B
Question 4: Answer A

Following the rules pictured on the right, Milan

received a card representing his answers.

Maya's answers were:

Question 1: Answer B
Question 2: Answer A
Question 3: Answer B
Question 4: Answer B
Milan’s Card
Which card represents Maya’s answers?

A B C D
 Asian MathSci League, Inc (AMSLI)
Website: amsliphil.com
Email address: amsliphil@yahoo.com
Contact Nos: +632-9254526

AIEP Send-off Training 2022

Session 3 Middle School

3. Colorful Chinese Character. The Chinese character deeply attracts the attention of the
little Beaver who intends to study its structure. A beaver creates a Color and Pattern-filled
Structure Board, which is shown below.

Which option represents the characters "三", "二", "八" all in the right way?
4. Overlapping Wallpapers. Robyn covers a wall with six overlapping rectangular sheets of
wallpaper as shown. Each sheet of wallpaper is designed using a different image in a
repeating pattern.

What is the order of the wallpaper pieces from the one placed first to the one placed last?

5. Stars and Moons. Marie would like a bracelet like the one on the right. She therefore gives
Stephan the following instructions:

a) Join a star piece and a moon piece.

b) Repeat step 1 two more times.
c) Join the three parts made so far into a single chain.
d) Add two more stars at one end of the chain.
e) Join both ends of the chain to make a bracelet.

Unfortunately, if Stephan does not have a picture of the bracelet, he may end up with a
bracelet that looks quite different, even if he follows the instructions exactly. Which of
the bracelets shown below can NOT be obtained by following Marie's instructions?

A B C D
6. Balloon Words. Mark is going to Maria's birthday party. He can't see colors clearly, so for
him yellow (C) looks the same as green (A), and blue (D) looks the same as red (B). Maria
decorated the room with different rows of colored balloons. Which two rows look the
same to Mark?

7. Bracket Bracelets. A jewelry shop produces chains used to make bracelets. The chains are
built by continually adding matching pairs of bracket-shaped ornaments. There are two
types of pairs:

After choosing a starting pair, a second pair is either added to the end of the chain or
inserted between the previously added pair. This process can be repeated any number of
times. Examples of three different chains that can be produced are shown below.

Which of the following chains can also be produced?

8. Swapping Shapes. Alice the beaver plays a game with shaped cards. She starts with a
single card that is a square and uses the following set of replacement rules.

meaning each square card is replaced by two triangle cards

meaning each triangle card is replaced by one square card,

one triangle and another square (in that order)
The result of following these rules three times is shown below.

Boris the beaver plays a similar game. He starts with one of a square, triangle or circle and
he plays with a different set of replacement rules. The result of following these rules three
times is shown below.

Which of the following set of replacement rules might Boris have used?

9. Animation. Taro is planning an animation of a face that is made from a sequence of

pictures. So that the animation runs smoothly, only one feature of the face should change
from one picture to the next. Unfortunately, the pictures got mixed up. Now Taro must
find the correct order again. Luckily, he knows which picture is last.

Which of the following pictures is placed first?

A B C D E
10. Kangaroo Jump. There are 10 plates in a row. There is one apple on each plate. Thomas,
the kangaroo, loves to jump. First, he jumps onto the leftmost plate with the letter A. On
each single jump after this, he either jumps forward two plates, or backwards three plates.
(An example of the two possible jumps from one plate is shown with arrows in the
picture.) Thomas only jumps onto plates with an apple. If he jumps onto a plate, he
collects the apple from it.

If Thomas collects all 10 apples, which apple does he collect last?

11. Color Maze. A chameleon travels on the grid below. It moves between adjacent cells
either horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. In a cell, a chameleon has the same color as
the color of the cell.

What is the minimum number of different colors that the chameleon has when traveling
from the lower left of the grid to the upper right?

12. Black Squares. Beatrice Beaver is playing around with her simple 3-by-3 computer screen.
She can paint some squares black. For example, if she painted only the top-left square,
the screen would look like this:
 Her computer also has “rotate” and “invert” buttons. The “rotate” button rotates the
screen clockwise by 90 degrees. The “invert” button changes all white squares to black
and all black squares to white. For example, when Beatrice presses the “rotate” and
“invert” buttons after painting only the top-left square, she can create a total of eight
different patterns:

Beatrice begins with different images on the screen. She uses the two types of buttons
any number of times and in any order trying to make different patterns. Which of the
following starting images allows Beatrice to make the largest number of different
patterns?

13. Symbols form the titles of ancient texts. Each type of symbol is associated with a digit as
shown below. Some different symbols are associated with the same digit.

The special number of a text is the sequence of digits associated with the symbols in the
title of the text (in order). For example, 56432 is the special number of the text with the
title:
Which of the following texts has the same special number as the red text below?
14. Wizard Beaver’s Alchemy. The wizard beaver has a magic box that melts 2 pieces of
different colors from 3 basic jewelry (triangle, square, and pentagon) to make a new one.
The wizard beaver always uses his magic box to make the jewelry needed. The new
jewelry is made by the following rules:

a) Only two different shapes and colors of jewelry can be melted in the magic box at
the same time.
b) Different shapes and colors of jewelry are formed after the melting process
according to the following rules of the magic box.
c) Melting process can be done more than one time.

Which of A, B, C, or D CANNOT be made from the four pieces of jewelry shown below?

A B C D
15. Olive Farm. Kalia the beaver farmer wants to plant some olive trees in a square field. To
protect the olive trees from excessive wind, she decides that she also needs to plant
cypresses around the field. In the charts below you can see two examples of tree
arrangements based on the following rules which Kalia makes for planting olive trees:

a) Each square plan contains the same number of rows and columns of olive trees
b) Plant the first olive tree at the top left corner within the border of cypresses
c) Leave one blank row between rows of olive trees, and leave one blank column
between columns of olive trees

How many olive trees and cypresses does Kalia have to plant, if she wants 5 rows of olive
trees?