Logic

1. Least exactly 4 2011 S.6

In a recent test of 100 students,

– 95 answered question 1 correctly
– 75 answered question 2 correctly
– 97 answered question 3 correctly
– 95 answered question 4 correctly
– 96 answered question 5 correctly.
What is the smallest number of students who could have answered exactly 4 of the 5 questions
correctly?

(A) 3 (B) 4 (C) 5 (D) 8 (E) 17

2. Wandering Robot 2011 J.4

The wandering robot is the latest innovation in military reconnaissance. Rather than go
directly to its target, which would make it predictable and therefore vulnerable, it makes
random moves in the general direction. The disadvantage is that it takes longer to reach its
target.
N

W E

A move is either to the north (N), east (E), south (S) or west (W).
S

One robot reached its target in the 22 moves E E N E N N W N E N E S E E E E E S S S W N.

If it had been direct, how many moves would it have taken?

(A) 8 (B) 10 (C) 12 (D) 13 (E) 14

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3. Paper Folding 2011 I.4

A piece of paper can be folded vertically or horizontally, and forward or backward. Vertical
folds are from the left (the left goes to the right), and horizontal folds are from the bottom
(the bottom goes to the top).

vertical, forward vertical, backward horizontal, forward horizontal, backward

After folding and unfolding the paper, the creases are depicted as shown below.

vertical, forward vertical, backward horizontal, forward horizontal, backward

The piece of paper below has been folded four times and then unfolded.

The last two folds were

(A) vertical forward, horizontal forward
(B) vertical backward, horizontal forward
(C) vertical backward, horizontal backward
(D) horizontal forward, vertical backward
(E) horizontal forward, horizontal backward
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4–6. Ant 2011 S.13–15

Directions the ant faces
3 u
2 n
1
w e
s

An ant is on the front face of a cube, facing up. It is trained to move around the cube by
obeying the following instructions:
F: move forward one side
L: turn left, and move forward one side
R: turn right, and move forward one side
B: turn 180°and move forward one side.
For example, if the ant is on side 1 facing up (1u) and receives the instruction R, it will move
to side 2 facing north (2n). Then after the instruction L it would move to side 3 facing west
(3w).
For each set of instructions below, what is the final side the ant is on, and which direction is
it facing?

4. BB LLL LRLRLR FBFB

5. RLRLRLRRRBFBFBBFB

6. LRLBBRLRFBLLBBLFBBRRRBLL

Your answer will be a two-digit number.

The first digit is the side. (Sides 4, 5 and 6 are opposite sides 1, 2 and 3 respectively.)
The second digit will be the direction. Replace
• up and down with 1 and 2 (for sides 1, 2, 4 and 5)
• north and south with 3 and 4 (for sides 2, 3, 5 and 6)
• west and east with 5 and 6 (for sides 1, 3, 4 and 6).
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7. Card Cutting 2012 S.3

Five people are playing a game of cards. There are 52 cards in the deck. Each person cut the
pack. A ‘cut’ consists of taking the top N cards and putting them on the bottom, without
otherwise changing their order.
First Andrew cut 28 cards,
then Kumar cut 31 cards,
then Daniel cut 2 cards,
then Mahendra cut some cards,
then Graeme cut 21 cards.
The final cut restored the pack to its original order.
How many cards did Mahendra cut?
(A) Fewer than 10 (B) Between 11 and 20 (C) Between 21 and 30
(D) Between 31 and 40 (E) More than 40

8. Fireworks 2012 J.1

Vera, Steve, Tim and Xiu are watching the new year fireworks from
their respective homes. At midnight, a sequence of starburst fireworks
is set off, one after the other. Each starburst is a single colour, red (R),
blue (B), yellow (Y) or green (G).
Due to trees and buildings in the way, no-one sees all of the fireworks.
However, they all record the colours of the fireworks they do see, in the
order that they see them. Later, they compare notes and try to work
out what would have been seen by someone at the event.
Vera saw B B Y G Y Y
Steve saw R G Y R Y
Tim saw R B B R G
Xiu saw B B G Y Y Y
Which of the following sequences is consistent with what they saw?
(A) R B B G Y R G Y Y
(B) R B B G Y R B Y Y
(C) B G B R Y R G Y Y
(D) B R B G Y R G Y Y
(E) R B G B Y R G Y Y
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9. Passwords 2012 I.3

Your rich uncle, who is something of a Luddite, is worried about your Facebook security. He
has promised you a new mountain bike, provided you change your password each day for two
years. You have negotiated him down to 720 days, but that is still a lot of passwords.
Your current password is B I L T O X (the name of your sister’s cat). You decide that you will
work through all the arrangements of the letters in B I L T O X in alphabetical order, B I L O T X,
B I L O X T, . . . , X T O L I B.
Which password will follow O X T I L B?
(A) O X T I B L (B) O X T L I B (C) O X T L B I
(D) O X T B I L (E) O X T B L I

10. Rail Fence Cipher 2012 S.2

The rail fence cipher first appeared in the US civil war. The message to be encrypted is
written in a wavelike pattern, down, up, down, up, . . . on a fixed number of lines or rails.
The cipher text is then read horizontally, rail by rail.
For example, with three rails, the message K O O K A B U R R A S would be written down
as
K A R
O K B R A
O U S
and the encrypted message would be K A R O K B R A O U S.
A message was encrypted using the rail fence cipher with three rails, giving
O E T R Y T R A C E S S C H.
What was the 7th letter of the message?

(A) Y (B) T (C) R (D) A (E) C

11. Christmas Lights 2013 J.3

John has a string of coloured Christmas lights he’d like to hang up. Each light on the string
is either red(R), blue(B) or green(G). However John has a very specific aesthetic taste for
Christmas lights, and would like to remove some of the lights from the string so that the
remaining sequence of lights is comprised of exactly two colours and alternates between them.
For example, in the following initial sequence of lights:
RBGBGRGBRGRBGBGBRGBRBGR
John could remove all but the lights shown in bold below
RBGBGRGBRGRBGBGBRGBRBGR
to get a sequence of 6 alternating blue and red lights.
BRBRBR
What is the longest such row that could be obtained from the initial sequence of lights?

(A) 11 (B) 12 (C) 13 (D) 14 (E) 15

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12. Messages From Space 2013 I.1

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

13. Semi-Sudoku 2013 J.1

You are teaching your young niece to play Sudoku. As a first step you tell her to fill in the
following grid so that each row and each column contains the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

6 1 2 4 5

 4 5 6

3  6

4 6 3 2 1

2 5 1 3 4

5 4 2 6 1 3

What is the sum of the two cells containing a ?

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

14. Only Turn Right 2013 I.3

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

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15. Migrating Platypus 2014 J.6

The endangered migrating platypus of SW Tasmania nest in burrows in the upper reaches
of the Ornithorhynchus River. After the platypups hatch, they swim downstream to their
feeding grounds. This requires them to swim over the Anatinus falls.

3m

3m

3m

3m

3m

3m

rocks rocks rocks

river

The Anatinus Falls consists of a series of drops of 3 or 6 metres onto horizontal ledges. The
platypups can survive a drop of 3 metres, but not 6 metres. And they do not survive dropping
onto rocks. As a conservation measure, barriers are to be constructed at one or both ends of
some of the ledges.
What is the fewest number of barriers that would ensure the survival of all of the platypups?

(A) 2 (B) 3 (C) 4 (D) 5 (E) 6

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16. Rectangles 2014 I.5

A grid has been subdivided into non-overlapping rectangles. One cell in each rectangle has
been labelled with the area of the rectangle. Your task is to determine the rectangles from
the labels.
For instance,
if you were given you would deduce

4 6 4 6

2 2

4 4

Here is the grid.

5 2 3 × 2

3 8

What is the area of the rectangle containing the ×?

(A) 2 (B) 3 (C) 4 (D) 6 (E) 8

17. Card Cutting 2 2015 S.2

Anna, Brett, Chris, David and Emma are playing a card game with a pack of 15 cards, each
of which has one of the letters A, B, . . . , O.
The cards are in order
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O
with A on top.
Anna takes some cards from the top. Then Brett takes some cards from the top of the
remaining cards. Then Chris and David do likewise. Finally Emma takes the rest.
Without changing the order of their cards, each one puts their cards back to form a new
deck, giving
H I M N O A B C J K L D E F G
with H on top.
When did David return his cards?

(A) first (B) second (C) third (D) fourth (E) fifth
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18. Wonder Fabric 2011 J.3

The 30 designers are all impressed with the new wonder fabric, and each wants to take back
a sample for testing. There is one large piece of fabric that has to be cut into 30 samples.
The machine takes several minutes to make each cut, and the designers are waiting, so you
want to make as few cuts as possible. The fabric cannot be folded, but the machine can cut
a stack of up to 5 pieces at a time.
What is the smallest number of cuts required to cut the fabric into 30 pieces?
(The pieces don’t have to be all the same size.)

(A) 6 (B) 7 (C) 8 (D) 9 (E) 10

19. Great-uncle’s Will 2011 I.6, S.5

Your eccentric great-uncle has left you a bequest in his will. Sort of. He somehow got his
hands on this weird little machine with a display and five buttons. The display shows four
digits. The machine operates as follows.
ˆ When the A button is pressed, the first digit decreases by 1.
If it is on 0, it changes to 9.
The B, C and D buttons do the same thing for the second, third and fourth digits.
ˆ When the E button is pressed, every digit increases by 1.
If any digit is on 9, it changes to 0.
The provision in the will is that $500 is to be shared between you and your undeserving
younger sister. You have to press buttons to change the display from 4 4 4 4 to 1 5 6 7.
(These numbers seem very strange. Your great-uncle was decidedly odd.) The will states
that you start off with the $500, and every time you press the A, B, C or D button she
gets $10, and every time you press the E button she gets $20. And she doesn’t have to do
anything!
What is the smallest amount that you can give her?

(A) $150 (B) $190 (C) $230 (D) $270 (E) $290

20. Magic Carpet 2012 S.4

Anna, Beth, Coral, Dianne, Emma and Frances are going

camping on an offshore island. They are using their magic
carpet to get to the island. The magic carpet can only take
2 people at a time, so there will need to be 9 trips, 5 across
carrying 2, and 4 returning carrying 1.
Flying on a magic carpet can cause air sickness, so the speed
of the carpet is determined by the rate at which the more susceptible passenger can travel.
The times that Anna, Beth, Coral, Dianne, Emma and Frances can travel one way without
queasiness are 1, 2, 7, 9, 11 and 12 minutes respectively.
What is the least time, in minutes, required to fly all members to the island?

(A) 33 (B) 37 (C) 41 (D) 45 (E) 49