2015 Moscow Math Olympiad
My favorite problem at the 2015 Moscow Olympiad was about an emperor and his wizards.
8-10th grade. Designed by I.V. Mitrofanov. The emperor invited 2015 of his wizards to a carnival. Some of the wizards are good and others are evil. The good wizards always tell the truth, whereas the evil ones are free to say anything they want. The wizards know who is who, but the emperor does not.
During the carnival, the emperor asks every wizard a yes-or-no question. Then he expels one of the wizards from his kingdom. The expelled wizard leaves through a magic door, which allows the emperor to realize what kind of wizard s/he was. After that the emperor starts the next round of questions and expels another wizard. He continues the rounds until he decides to stop.
Prove that it is possible to expel all the evil wizards, while expelling not more than one good wizard.
Two other problems at the Olympiad were noteworthy—because no competitor solved them:
11th grade. Designed by O.N. Kosuhin. Prove that it is impossible to put the integers from 1 to 64 (using each integer once) into an 8 by 8 table so that any 2 by 2 square considered as a matrix has a determinant that is equal to 1 or −1.
Share:9th grade. Designed by A.Y. Kanel-Belov. Do there exist two polynomials with integer coefficients such that each of them has a coefficient with absolute value exceeding 2015, but no coefficient of their product has absolute value exceeding 1?
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12 April 2015, 10:07 pm