Maths Olympiad Prep

Track / Stage 7 / 3 of 300 #1883 of 2444

Problem 1883

National Olympiad second round; IMO P1/P4
Combinatorics Difficulty 7.0 Find the answer BMO Round 1 · United Kingdom · 2020

Six children are evenly spaced around a circular table. Initially, one has a pile of n>0n > 0 sweets in front of them, and the others have nothing. If a child has at least four sweets in front of them, they may perform the following move: eat one sweet and give one sweet to each of their immediate neighbours and to the child directly opposite them. An arrangement is called perfect if there is a sequence of moves which results in each child having the same number of sweets in front of them. For which values of nn is the initial arrangement perfect?

The source for this one didn't record the answer, so there is nothing to check what you type against. Work it on paper and mark yourself against the solution below.

Next problem →

We don't reproduce this publisher's solutions. Their own solution is here — work the problem first.

Source: UK Mathematics Trust, licensed © UK Mathematics Trust; question papers published free at bmos.ukmt.org.uk. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty, ordering) added by this project. Solutions are the publisher's, linked not copied.