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Stanford Math Circle Sunday May 30, 2010

Problem Solving Using Invariants and Monovariants

1. There are green, blue, and red SMC students. Whenever 2 students of different colors meet, they both
change to the third color.

(a) Given 4 green, 5 blue, and 5 red students, is it possible to have all students change to the same color?
(b) Given 4 green, 5 blue, and 6 red students, is it possible to have all students change to the same color?
(c) Given 4 green, 5 blue, and 7 red students, is it possible to have all students change to the same color?
(d) Given 13 green, 19 blue, and 17 red students, is it possible to have all students change to the same
color?
(e) Given 13 green, 19 blue, and 1 red students, is it possible to have all students change to the same color?
(f) Given 13 green, 15 blue, and 17 red students, is it possible to have all students change to the same
color?
(g) Can you find a condition which is necessary and sufficient for a given starting configuration to be
solvable? (Here, solvable means that it is possible to obtain a configuration in which all students have
the same color).

2. Write 11 numbers on the board–six zeros and five ones, in any order. Perform the following operation 10
times: cross out any two numbers, and if they were equal, write another zero on the board. If they were
not equal, write a one. Determine the final number on the board, and show that it does not depend on the
manner in which the numbers were chosen at each step.

3. Suppose that the positive integer n is odd. Write the numbers 1, 2, . . . , 2n on the board. Choose any 2
numbers a and b, erase them, and write |a − b|. Determine whether the final number on the board will be
odd or even, and show that it does not depend on the manner in which the numbers were chosen at each
step.

4. The numbers 1, 2, . . . , 20 are written on a blackboard. Choose any 2 numbers a and b, erase them, and write
the new number a + b − 1. Determine which number will be on the blackboard after 19 such operations, and
show that it does not depend on the manner in which the numbers were chosen at each step.

5. The boxes of an m × n table are filled with numbers so that the sum of the numbers in each row and in each
column is equal to 1. Prove that m = n.

6. A circle is divided into 6 sectors. The numbers 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0 are written into the sectors in the counterclockwise
direction. You may increase any two neighboring numbers by 1. Is it possible to make all of the numbers
equal?

7. A dragon has 100 heads. A knight can cut off 15, 17, 20, or 5 heads with one blow of his sword. In each of
these respective cases, 24, 2, 12, or 14 new heads grow back. If all heads are cut off, the dragon dies. Is it
possible for the knight to kill the dragon?

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8. Consider an 8 × 8 chessboard with the usual coloring. You may recolor all squares (a) of a row or column or
(b) of a 2 × 2 square. Can you reach just one black square?

9. The numbers 1, 2, . . . , 20 are written on a blackboard. Choose any 2 numbers a and b, erase them, and write
the new number ab + a + b. Determine which number will be on the blackboard after 19 such operations,
and show that it does not depend on the manner in which the numbers were chosen at each step.

10. A room is initially empty. Each minute, either one person enters or two people leave. After exactly 31999
minutes, could the room contain 31000 + 2 people?

11. Let a1 , a2 , . . . , an be a permutation of the integers 1, 2, . . . , n. Prove that if n is odd, then the product

P = (a1 − 1)(a2 − 2) · · · (an − n)

is even.

12. Start with the set {3, 4, 12}. In each step, you may choose two of the numbers a and b and replace them by
0.6a − 0.8b and 0.8a + 0.6b. Can you reach (a) or (b) in finitely many steps?

(a) {4, 6, 12}

1
(b) {x, y, z}, where each of |x − 4|, |y − 6|, |z − 12| are less than √
3

13. Consider a 3 × 3 array of squares in which initially the square in the upper left corner is colored block, and
all others are colored white. You may recolor all of the squares in a row or column. Is it possible to make
all of the squares white?

14. Consider an 8 × 8 array of squares in which all four corner squares are colored black and all other squares
are colored white. You may recolor all of the squares in a row or column. Is it possible to make all of the
squares white?

15. The integers 1, 2, . . . , n are arranged in any order. In one step, you may switch any 2 neighboring integers.
Is it possible to obtain the initial order after an odd number of steps?

16. Start with 2 numbers, 18 and 19, on the board. In one step, you may add another number equal to the sum
of two preceding numbers. Can you reach the number 1994?

17. Draw a convex polygon with n sides. Start connecting its vertices with diagonals, and when you can’t draw
any more without intersecting existing diagonals, count the total number. Find a formula for the total
number of diagonals and for the total number of triangles formed, and show that these formulas do not
depend on the manner in which the diagonals are drawn at each step.

18. The following operations are permitted with the quadratic polynomial ax2 + bx + c: (a) switch a and c,
and (b) replace x by x + t, where t is any real number. By repeating these operations, can you transform
x2 − x − 2 into x2 − x − 1?

19. Starting at (1, 1), a stone is moved in the coordinate plane according to the following rules:

(a) From any point (a, b), the stone can move to (2a, b) or (a, 2b).

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(b) From any point (a, b), the stone can move to (a − b, b) if a > b or (a, b − a) if a < b.

For which positive integers (x, y) can the stone be moved to (x, y)?

20. The number 8n is written on the board. The sum of its digits is calculated, then the sum of the digits of the
result is calculated, and so on, until a single digit is reached. What is this digit if n = 2010?

21. (1997 Colorado Mathematical Olympiad) On every square of a 1997 × 1997 board, either a +1 or −1 is
written. For every row, we compute the product Ri of all numbers written in that row, and for every
column, we compute the product Ci of all numbers written in that column. Is it possible to arrange the
numbers in such a way that
1997
X
(Ri + Ci ) = 0?
i=1

22. (Kvant (Quantum), Russia) In the sequence 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 3, 5, 0, . . ., each term starting with the seventh is
equal to the last digit of the sum of the preceding six terms. Prove that this sequence does not contain six
consecutive terms equal to 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1.

23. (Bay Area Mathematical Olympiad 1999) A lock has 16 keys arranged in a 4 × 4 array, each key oriented
either horizontally or vertically. In order to open it, all the keys must be vertically oriented. When a key
is switched to another position, all the other keys in the same row and column automatically switch their
positions too (see diagram). Show that no matter what the starting positions are, it is always possible to
open this lock.

5
P
24. (IMO 1986) To each vertex of a pentagon, assign an integer xi such that the sum S = xi > 0. If x, y, z are
i=1
the numbers assigned to three successive vertices and if y < 0, then we replace (x, y, z) by (x + y, −y, y + z).
This step is repeated as long as there exists a vertex labeled with a negative integer. Determine whether or
not this algorithm always stops.

25. A rectangle is tiled with smaller rectangles, each of which has at least one side of integral length. Prove
that the tiled rectangle must also have at least one side of integral length. (Note: see Stan Wagon’s article
“Fourteen Proofs of a Result About Tiling a Rectangle” in the American Mathematical Monthly, Volume 94
(7), p. 601–617 for more discussion of this problem.) Once you’ve proved the result about integers, can you
prove an analogous result about rational numbers? Algebraic numbers? Higher dimensions?

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26. (IMO 1997) An n × n matrix (square array) whose entries are from the set S = {1, 2, . . . , 2n − 1} is called a
silver matrix if, for each i = 1, . . . , n, the i-th row and i-th column together contain all elements of S. Show
that there is no silver matrix for n = 1997.

27. (2008 Putnam) Start with a finite sequence a1 , a2 , . . . , an of positive integers. If possible, choose 2 indices
j < k such that aj does not divide ak , and replace aj and ak by gcd(aj , ak ) and lcm(aj , ak ) respectively.
Prove that this process must eventually stop.

28. (Note: this is a very interesting problem, with lots of neat related theory and applications. We’ll consider
this problem in more detail in another SMC session, so go ahead and start thinking about it now!) You may
put a checker on any lattice point (point with integer coordinates) in the plane with y-coordinate less than or
equal to 0 (i.e. lattice points on and below the x-axis). Note that you may place infinitely many checkers to
start. The only legal moves are horizontal or vertical “jumping”–a checker can leap over a neighbor, ending
up 2 units up, down, right, or left of its original position, provided that the destination point is unoccupied.
After the jump is complete, the checker that was jumped over is removed.

(a) What is the minimum number of checkers needed to reach y = 1?

(b) What is the minimum number of checkers needed to reach y = 2?
(c) What is the minimum number of checkers needed to reach y = 3?
(d) What is the minimum number of checkers needed to reach y = 4?
(e) Show that it is not possible to reach y = 5.
(f) Now consider a 3-dimensional lattice board, and draw a dividing plane. How far can we move forward
in the 3-dimensional version?
(g) Going back to the 2-dimensional board, what happens if we allow diagonal jumps?

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