What is the sum of all of the possibilities for Sam's number if Sam thinks of a 5-digit number, Sam's friend Sally tries to guess his number, Sam writes the number of matching digits beside each of Sally's guesses, and a digit is considered "matching" when it is the correct digit in the correct position?
CEMC Pascal
Solution
We label the digits of the unknown number as vwxyz.
Since vwxyz and 71794 have 0 matching digits, then and and and and .
Since vwxyz and 71744 have 1 matching digit, then the preceding information tells us that .
Since and 51545 have 2 matching digits and , then is of one of the following three forms: or or .
Case 1: vwxyz
Since and 21531 have 1 matching digit and , then either or .
If , then and 51545 would have 3 matching digits, which violates the given condition. Thus, .
Thus, and we know that and .
To this point, this form is consistent with the 1st, 2 nd, 3 rd and 7 th rows of the table.
Since and 59135 have 1 matching digit, this is taken care of by the fact that and we note that and .
Since and 58342 have 2 matching digits, this is taken care of by the fact that and , and we note that and .
Since and 37348 have 2 matching digits and , then either or .
But we already know that , and so .
Therefore, vwxyz with the restrictions that .
We note that the integers satisfy the requirements, so are all possibilities for Sam's numbers.
Case 2: vwxyz
Since and 51545 have only 2 matching digits, so and .
Since and 21531 have 1 matching digit, then this is taken care of by the fact that , and we note that and . (We already know that .)
Since and 59135 have 1 matching digit, then or or .
This means that we must have .
Thus, vwxyz and we know that and .
To this point, this form is consistent with the 1 st, 2 nd, 3 rd , 4 th, and 7 th rows of the table.
Since and 58342 have 2 matching digits and , then .
Since and 37348 have 2 matching digits, then .
In this case, the integer 39542 is the only possibility, and it satisfies all of the requirements.
Case 3: vwxyz
Since and 21531 have 1 matching digit and we know that , then or .
But if , then and 51545 would have 3 matching digits, so and .
Thus, vwxyz and we know that and .
To this point, this form is consistent with the 1st, 2 nd, 3rd and 7 th rows of the table.
Since and 59135 have 1 matching digit, this is taken care of by the fact that and we note that and .
Since and 58342 have 2 matching digits, then or , but not both.
Since and 37348 have 2 matching digits, then or , but not both.
If , then we have to have , and so neither nor is true.
Thus, it must be the case that and .
Therefore, vwxyz with the restrictions that .
We note that the integers satisfy the requirements, so are all possibilities for Sam's numbers.
Thus, there are 13 possibilities for Sam's numbers and the sum of these is 526758.