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1. In every 16-digit number, show that there is a string of one or more con-
secutive digits such that the product of these digits is a perfect square.
(This problem is from the 1991 Japan Mathematical Olympiad.)
2. Suppose a triangle can be placed inside a square of unit area in such a
way that the center of the square is not inside the triangle. Show that one
side of the triangle has length less than 1. (This example came from the
XLI Mathematical Olympiad in Poland.)

3. (TOURNAMENT OF TOWNS 2002) Chip and Dale play the following

game. Chip starts by splitting 1001 nuts between three piles, so Dale
can see it. In response, Dale chooses some number N from 1 to 1001.
Then Chip moves nuts from the piles he prepared to a new (fourth) pile
until there will be exactly N nuts in any one or more piles. When Chip
accomplishes his task, Dale gets an exact amount of nuts that Chip moved.
What is the maximal number of nuts that Dale can get for sure, no matter
how Chip acts? (Naturally, Dale wants to get as many nuts as possible,
while Chip wants to lose as little as possible).
4. Inside the unit square lie several circles the sum of whose circumferences
is equal to 10. Prove that there exist infinitely many lines each of which
intersects at least four of the circles.

5. Two disks, one smaller than the other, are each divided into 200 congruent
sectors. In the larger disk, 100 of the sectors are chosen arbitrarily and
painted red; the other 100 sectors are painted blue. In the smaller disk,
each sector is painted either red or blue with no stipulation on the number
of red and blue sectors. The small disk is then placed on the larger disk
so that their centers coincide. Show that it is possible to align the two
disks so that the number of sectors of the small disk whose color matches
the corresponding sector of the large disk is at least 100.

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 6. (Erdos and Szekeres.) Show that every sequence a1 , a2 , ..., an2 +1 of n2 + 1
real numbers contains either an increasing subsequence of length n + 1 or
a decreasing subsequence of length n + 1.

2 Ordered Sets and Extremal Elements

1. The entries of a matrix are real numbers of absolute value less than or
equal to 1, and the sum of the elements in each column is 0. Prove that
we can permute the elements of each column in such a way that the sum
of the elements in each row will have absolute value less than or equal to
2.
2. [IMO Shortlist 1988] LetN = {1, 2, ..., n}, with n ≥ 2.
A collection F = {A1 , A2 , ..., At } of subsets of N is said to be separating, if
for every pair {x, y} there is a set Ai ∈ F so that Ai ∩ {x, y} ,contains just
one element. F is said to be covering, if every element of N is contained
in at least one set Ai ∈ F . What is the smallest value of t in terms of
n so that there is a family F = {A1 , A2 , ..., At } which is simultaneously
separating and covering?
3. Students in a class form groups. Each group contains exactly three mem-
bers and any two distinct groups have at most one member in common.
Prove that if there are 46 students in the class, then there exists a set of
at least 10 students in which no group is properly contained.

3 Invariants and Semi-Invariants

1. [Italy TST 1995] An 8 × 8 board is tiled with 21 trominoes (3 × 1 tiles),
so that exactly one square is not covered by a tromino. No two trominoes
can overlap and no tromino can stick out of the board. Determine all
possible positions of the square not covered by a tromino.
2. [Czech and Slovak Republics 1997] Each side and diagonal of a regular
n-gon (n ≥ 3) is colored blue or green. A move consists of choosing a
vertex and switching the color of each segment incident to that vertex
(from blue to green or vice versa). Prove that for odd n regardless of the
initial coloring, it is possible to make the number of blue segments incident
to each vertex even by following a sequence of moves.
3. [IMO Shortlist 2013, C3] A crazy physicist discovered a new kind of par-
ticle which he called an imon. Some pairs of imons in the lab can be
entangled, and each imon can participate in many entanglement relations.
The physicist has found a way to perform the following two kinds of op-
erations with these particles, one operation at a time.
(i) If some imon is entangled with an odd number of other imons in the

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 lab, then the physicist can destroy it.
(ii) At any moment, he may double the whole family of imons in the lab by
creating a copy I’ of each imon I. During this procedure, the two copies
I’ and J’ become entangled if and only if the original imons I and J are
entangled, and each copy I’ becomes entangled with its original imon I;
no other entanglements occur or disappear at this moment.
Show that after a finite number of operations, he can ensure that no pair
of particles is entangled.

4. [Japan1998] Let n be a positive integer. At each of 2n points around a

circle we place a disk with one white side and one black side. We may
perform the following move: select a black disk, and flip over its two
neighbors. Find all initial configurations from which some sequence of
such moves leads to a position where all disks but one are white.

4 Colouring proofs
1. Each point on the circumference of a circle is coloured either red or blue.
Prove that there exist three distinct points on this circumference X, Y, Z
all of the same colour such that |XY | = |XZ|.
2. Six points are given in the space such that the pairwise distances between
them are all distinct. Consider the triangles with vertices at these points.
Prove that the longest side of one of these triangles is at the same time
the shortest side of another .
3. (IMO 1983)Let ABC be an equilateral triangle and E the set of all points
contained in the three segments AB, BC, and CA (including A, B, and
C). Determine whether, for every partition of E into two disjoint subsets,
at least one of the two subsets contains the vertices of a right-angled
triangle.

5 Point Set Combinatorics

1. (1963 Beijing Mathematics Competition) There are 2n + 3(n ≥ 1) given
points on a plane such that no three of them are collinear and no four of
them are concyclic. Is it always possible to draw a circle through three of
them so that half of the other 2n points are inside and half are outside
the circle?

2. (1941 Moscow Math. Olympiad) On a plane are given n points such that
every three of them is inside some circle of radius 1. Prove that all these
points are inside some circle of radius 1.

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 3. There is a set S of points in the plane with the property that any triangle
with vertices in S has area at most 1. Prove that there exists a triangle
with area 4 containing all the points in S. (Korea, 1995)

6 Problems on convex hull

1. There are n > 3 coplanar points, no three of which are collinear and every
four of them are the vertices of a convex quadrilateral. Prove that the n
points are the vertices of a convex n-sided polygon.
2. (1979 Putnam Exam) Let A be a set of 2n points in the plane, no three of
which are collinear, n of them are colored red and the other blue. Prove
that there are n line segments, no two with a point in common, such that
the endpoints of each segment are points of A having different colors.
3. 1985 IMO Longlisted Problem) Let A and B be finiteS disjoint sets of points
in the plane such that any three distinct points in A B are not collinear.
Assume that at least one of the sets A, B contains at least five points.
Show that there exists a triangle all of whose vertices are contained in A
or in B that does not contained in its interior any point from the other
set.

7 Counting in two ways : Fubini’s Principle

1. (IMO HK Prelim 2003) Fifteen students join a summer course. Every day,
three students are on duty after school to clean the classroom. After the
course, it was found that every pair of students has been on duty together
exactly once. How many days does the course last for?

2. (IMO 1987) Let pn (k) be the number of permutations of the set {1, 2, ...,
n}, n ≥1, which have exactly k fixed points. Prove that
n
X
k · pn (k) = n!
k=0

3. (CHKMO 2007) In a school there are 2007 male and 2007 female students.
Each student joins not more than 100 clubs in the school. It is known that
any two students of opposite genders have joined at least one common club.
Show that there is a club with at least 11 male and 11 female members.
4. (2003 IMO Shortlisted Problem) Let x1 , ..., xn and y1 , ..., yn be real num-
bers. Let A = (aij )1 ≤ i, j ≤ n be the matrix with entries
(
1 if xi + yi ≥ 0
aij =
0 if xi + yi < 0.

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 Suppose that B is an n × n matrix with entries 0 or 1 such that the sum
of the elements in each row and each column of B is equal to the corre-
sponding sum for the matrix A. Prove that A = B.

5. In a school there are b teachers and c students satisfying the following

conditions:
(1) Each teacher teaches exactly k students;
(2) For any two distinct students, there are exactly h teachers teaching
them.
c(c−1)
Prove that hb = k(k−1) (7th Hong Kong Mathematical Olympiad in 1994)

6. (IMO1998)In a contest, there are m candidates and n judges, where n ≥ 3

is an odd integer. Each candidate is evaluated by each judge as either pass
or fail. Suppose that each pair of judges agrees on at most k candidates.
Prove that
k n−1
≥ .
m 2n
7. Let n be a positive integer, and let (a1 , a2 , · · ·, an ) be a permutation of
(1, 2, 3, · · ·, n). For 1 ≤ k ≤ n, let
n
Fk = {ai | ai < ak , i > k} and Gk = {ai | ai > ak , i < k} Prove that
P
|
k=1
n
P
Fk |= | Gk |
k=1

Incidence Matrices
Proposition 1. If A = (ai,j ) is a r × c matrix with row sums Ri , i = 1, 2, ..., r,
and column sums Cj , j = 1, 2, ..., c, then
r
X c
X
Ri = Cj
i=1 j=1

Counting pairs of 1’s.

Proposition 2. Let A = (ai,j ) is a r × c (0, 1)-matrix with column sums Cj .
Suppose that for every two rows, there exist exactly t columns that contain 1’s
from both rows, then
  X c  
r Cj
t =
2 j=1
2

1. In a certain committee, each member belongs to exactly three subcom-

mittees, and each sub-committee has exactly three members. Prove that
the number of members equals to the number of subcommittees.

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2. (INMO 1986) Suppose A1 , . . . , A6 are six sets each with four elements and
B1 , . . . , Bn are n sets each with two elements, Let S = A1 ∪A2 ∪· · ·∪A6 =
B1 ∪ · · · ∪ Bn . Given that each elements of S belongs to exactly four of
the Ai ’s and to exactly three of the Bj ’s, find n.
3. (IMC 2002) Two hundred students participated in a mathematical con-
test. They had six problems to solve. It is known that each problem was
correctly solved by at least 120 participants. Prove that there must be
two participants such that every problem was solved by at least one of
these two students.

4. [USA TST 2005] Let n be an integer greater than 1. For a positive integer
m, let Sm = {1, 2, ..., mn}. Suppose that there exists a 2n-element set T
such that
(a) each element of T is an m-element subset of Sm
(b) each pair of elements of T shares at most one common element; and
(c) each element of Sm is contained in exactly two elements of T . Deter-
mine the maximum possible value of m in terms of n.
5. (IMO 1998) In a competition, there are a contestants and b judges, where
b ≥ 3 is an odd integer. Each judge rates each contestant as either “pass”
or “fail”. Suppose k is a number such that, for any two judges, their ratings
coincide for at most k contestants. Prove that k/a ≥ (b − 1)/2b.