AUSTRALIAN

INFORMATICS
COMPETITION
Thursday 9 May 2013

Intermediate Paper
Years 9 & 10
Name:

INSTRUCTIONS
• Do not open the competition paper until told to do so.
• Maintain silence at all times.
• Do not bring mobile phones into the room.
• You may use calculators and language dictionaries.
• You may NOT borrow equipment without a supervisor’s permission.
• There are 15 questions. Questions 1 – 6 are multiple-choice with five possible answers given.
Questions 7 – 15 require a three-digit answer. Attempt all questions. Penalties do not apply.
• You are allowed working time of one hour (60 minutes). There is no extra reading time.
• This is a competition not a test; do not expect to answer all questions.
• Diagrams are NOT drawn to scale. They are intended only as aids.
• The questions have been thoroughly checked. Each question stands as written. No further
explanation of questions can be provided.
• You must not leave your seat. If you have any other questions or problems, please raise your hand
and wait for a supervisor.
• If you wish to leave the room a supervisor must accompany you.
• Record all your answers on the answer sheet provided.
• Use B or 2B lead pencils only. Ball point and ink pen markings may not activate the optical scanner.
• Do not make any other marks on the answer sheet as these may make the sheet unreadable.
• If you make an error, use a plastic eraser to completely remove all lead marks and smudges.
• Check that the number of the answer you are filling in is the same as the number of the question
you are answering. This is particularly important if you decide to leave a question blank.
• To ensure the integrity of the competition and to identify outstanding students, the AMT reserves
the right to re-examine students before deciding whether to grant official status to their score.

© 2013 AMT Publishing amtt limited acn 083 950 341

Australian Informatics Competition 2013 (Intermediate) 1

Part A: Questions 1–6

Each question should be answered by a single choice from A to E.
Questions are worth 3 points each.

1. Messages From Space

Messages sent to Earth from a spacecraft consist of the digits 1, . . . , 9. Some of the digits
may be lost in transmission. To combat this, extra (redundant) information is sent so
that the message can be reconstructed. In one scheme, d − 1 zeros are inserted after each
digit d. For instance, the message 4 2 3 1 2 would be sent as 4 0 0 0 2 0 3 0 0 1 2 0.
A message sent from the spacecraft was received as 0 0 4 0 3 0 0 1 0 2 4. What is the
fewest number of digits that could have been lost? (Include zeros.)

(A) 5 (B) 6 (C) 7 (D) 8 (E) 9

2. Maximum Sum of Adjacent Products

The sum of adjacent products of the list 4 2 3 1 is
(4 × 2) + (2 × 3) + (3 × 1) = 8 + 6 + 3 = 17.
However you can reorder the list to give a larger sum of adjacent products.
What is the largest sum of adjacent products for a list containing each of the numbers
1, . . . , 7 exactly once?

(A) 111 (B) 115 (C) 119 (D) 123 (E) 127

3. Only Turn Right

How many of the following diagrams can you draw without lifting your pen and without
making any left turns? (You can start wherever you like, start drawing in any direction,
and draw over lines more than once.)

(A) 1 (B) 2 (C) 3 (D) 4 (E) 5

Australian Informatics Competition 2013 (Intermediate) 2

4. The New Truck

A mining community consists of 9 towns that are already connected by an extensive
road system. However a new truck has been ordered that requires some of the existing
roads to be widened. A survey has revealed the cost of widening each section of road
and the results are given on the diagram below. The costs are given in the local currency
of rads. The council is not concerned whether the truck travels by the shortest route. It
only requires that there is a way the truck will be able to travel from any one town to
any other town in the community.

16
10
12 15
11
15

13 13
14

17
13 14

16

17

What is the smallest total cost in rads that the council would have to pay?

(A) 100 (B) 102 (C) 104 (D) 106 (E) 108

5. Arc Routes

A B

In the diagram above, there are five left-to-right routes from A to B:

A B A B A B

A B A B

How many left-to-right routes are there from A to B in the diagram below?

A B

(A) 100 – 299 (B) 300 – 499 (C) 500 – 699

(D) 700 – 899 (E) 900 – 1099
Australian Informatics Competition 2013 (Intermediate) 3

6. Hex Frog
A frog is sitting on a lily pad in a large pond. The frog may
jump from one lily pad to another. However, the frog may

only jump straight up or down, or diagonally at 60◦ from the 

vertical. It can jump over large spans of water, but it may not F

jump over another lily pad or land in the water. (White squares  
represent lily pads and grey squares represent water.)

In the diagram above, the frog is on the lily pad marked F. The number of pads that are
more than 3 jumps away from the frog is

(A) 0 (B) 1 (C) 2 (D) 3 (E) 4

Australian Informatics Competition 2013 (Intermediate) 4

Part B: Questions 7–15

Each question should be answered by a number in the range 0–999.
Questions are worth 2 points each.

7–9. Hopping
You are playing a game where you have to hop along a line of squares from left to right.
You can hop to the adjacent square, or hop over it to the next one.
Each square has a number in it. If you hop onto a square from the adjacent square, you
get that number of points. If you hop over a square, you get double the points of the
square you land on, but miss out on the points in the square you hop over.
Consider the squares below.

S 4 2 3

Starting from S to the left of the squares, you could get 9 points by hopping onto all
squares, 7 by hopping over the first square, and 10 by hopping over the second square.
Each list below represents numbers in a row of squares. For each, what is the most
points you could get following the rules above?

7. 4 5 6 7 4 5

8. 2 1 4 5 1 2 5 6 3 2

9. 2 3 5 3 4 6 4 5 8 5 6 9
Australian Informatics Competition 2013 (Intermediate) 5

10–12. Christmas Presents

Several families gathered for Christmas. Each of the children received a present, and
there was promptly a flurry of swapping. Sometimes a child swapped more than once.
For each of the following, what is the smallest number of swaps that could have taken
place?

10. child A B C D E F G H I J K L
present before swapping a b c d e f g h i j k l
present after swapping c d b e a j h l k g f i

11. child A B C D E F G H I J K L M
present before swapping a b c d e f g h i j k l m
present after swapping d c b i f g h e l m j a k

12. child A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O
present before swapping a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o
present after swapping b k d j c l e m f n g o a i h
Australian Informatics Competition 2013 (Intermediate) 6

13–15. Golf
Yani and Na Yeon are entering as a team in a golf match. Their match score is calcu-
lated as follows. For each hole they must choose to include either Yani’s score or Na
Yeon’s score. Overall, an equal number of scores must be chosen from each player. For
example, if there are 10 holes in a game, 5 of Yani’s scores and 5 of Na Yeon’s scores
must be included.
The aim is to make the combined score as small as possible.
For instance, suppose there were four holes and the scorecard was as follows:
Hole 1 2 3 4
Yani 4 1 4 5
Na Yeon 2 3 4 2
The smallest match score, 9, would be achieved by taking Yani’s score for holes 2 and
3, and Na Yeon’s score for holes 1 and 4.
For each of the scorecards below, what is the smallest possible match score?

13.
Hole 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Yani 4 1 3 2 3 2 4 5
Na Yeon 3 2 2 3 4 1 5 6

14.
Hole 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Yani 2 1 2 2 5 6 1 2 2 2 3 1
Na Yeon 4 2 3 5 4 5 4 2 6 5 2 4

15.
Hole 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
Yani 3 5 4 3 5 5 6 4 7 3 5 7 2 1 2 4
Na Yeon 1 2 1 1 5 1 2 7 3 3 2 4 1 3 3 3
 2013 AIC Answers
Question Intermediate
1 D
2 E
3 D
4 D
5 C
6 A
7 34
8 37
9 70
10 10
11 9
12 14
13 22
14 28
15 40
THE AUSTRALIAN INFORMATICS COMPETITION
BOOK 1 2005-2010

Intermediate Paper
This book contains the questions, solutions and statistics from the 2005-2010 Australian
Informatics Competition papers. The questions are grouped by category, and the book
includes an explanation of each category and its relevance. Within a category, there may
be several problem types, each of which also has an introduction, including practical
applications and an outline of the method of solution.

Available from the Australian Mathematics Trust website www.amt.edu.au for $42.00 each.

A ustralian M athematics T rust