Maths Olympiad Prep

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Combinatorics Difficulty 7.0 National olympiad Prove it Argentina

Ana placed the numbers from 11 to 99 in the squares of the figure, one in each square, without repeating numbers. It turned out that, for each of the four arrows indicated, the sum of the three numbers in that direction is equal to the number of Ana's cats. How many cats does Ana have? Find all possibilities.
Figure 1

Solution

Denote the numbers in the squares as shown in the figure, and let xx be the number of cats Ana has. If we add up both vertical arrows plus the top horizontal arrow we find that each number appears exactly once on this sum, except for aa which is added twice, and ee which does not appear on the sum. Hence, since 1+2++9=451+2+\ldots+9 = 45, we have 45a+e=3x45 - a + e = 3x. Since aa and ee are different numbers from the set {1,2,,9}\{1, 2, \ldots, 9\}, we know that a+e-a+e is at least 9+1=8-9+1 = -8 and at most 1+9=8-1+9 = 8. Therefore 4583x45+8    13x1745 - 8 \leq 3x \leq 45 + 8 \implies 13 \leq x \leq 17.

We will now prove that x15x \neq 15. If this were the case, then a+b+c=e+f+g=f+h+i=15a+b+c = e+f+g = f+h+i = 15, but also d+h+i=45(a+b+c)(e+f+g)=15d+h+i = 45 - (a+b+c) - (e+f+g) = 15. This implies d+h+i=f+h+id+h+i = f+h+i and thus d=fd = f, which is impossible.

To complete the solution, we now show with the following examples that 1313, 1414, 1616 and 1717 are possible values for xx:

Figure 2

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