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HMMT November: Theme Round

1) Given the rules of the rock-paper-scissors tournament and that Alice always plays rock and Bob always plays paper, the probability that Alice is crowned champion is 1/2. 2) By substituting the given equations x^y = 27 and (sqrt(x))^y = 9 into xy, the only possible value for xy is 3. 3) The sum of all possible values of Alice's initial number is 2023.

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Aparna Dwivedi
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108 views

HMMT November: Theme Round

1) Given the rules of the rock-paper-scissors tournament and that Alice always plays rock and Bob always plays paper, the probability that Alice is crowned champion is 1/2. 2) By substituting the given equations x^y = 27 and (sqrt(x))^y = 9 into xy, the only possible value for xy is 3. 3) The sum of all possible values of Alice's initial number is 2023.

Uploaded by

Aparna Dwivedi
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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HMMT November

November 12, 2022


Theme Round
1. Alice and Bob are playing in an eight-player single-elimination rock-paper-scissors tournament. In the
first round, all players are paired up randomly to play a match. Each round after that, the winners of
the previous round are paired up randomly. After three rounds, the last remaining player is considered
the champion. Ties are broken with a coin flip. Given that Alice always plays rock, Bob always plays
paper, and everyone else always plays scissors, what is the probability that Alice is crowned champion?
Note that rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper, and paper beats rock.
2. Alice is√ thinking of a√positive real number x, and Bob is thinking of a positive real number y. Given
that x y = 27 and ( x)y = 9, compute xy.
3. Alice is bored in class, so she thinks of a positive integer. Every second after that, she subtracts from
her current number its smallest prime divisor, possibly itself. After 2022 seconds, she realizes that her
number is prime. Find the sum of all possible values of her initial number.
4. Alice and Bob stand atop two different towers in the Arctic. Both towers are a positive integer number
of meters tall and are a positive (not necessarily integer) distance away from each other. One night,
the sea between them has frozen completely into reflective ice. Alice shines her flashlight directly at
the top of Bob’s tower, and Bob shines his flashlight at the top of Alice’s tower by first reflecting it
off the ice. The light from Alice’s tower travels 16 meters to get to Bob’s tower, while the light from
Bob’s tower travels 26 meters to get to Alice’s tower. Assuming that the lights are both shone from
exactly the top of their respective towers, what are the possibilities for the height of Alice’s tower?
5. Alice is once again very bored in class. On a whim, she chooses three primes p, q, r independently and
uniformly at random from the set of primes of at most 30. She then calculates the roots of px2 + qx + r.
What is the probability that at least one of her roots is an integer?
6. A regular octagon is inscribed in a circle of radius 2. Alice and Bob play a game in which they take
turns claiming vertices of the octagon, with Alice going first. A player wins as soon as they have
selected three points that form a right angle. If all points are selected without either player winning,
the game ends in a draw. Given that both players play optimally, find all possible areas of the convex
polygon formed by Alice’s points at the end of the game.
7. Alice and Bob are playing in the forest. They have six sticks of length 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 inches. Somehow,
they have managed to arrange these sticks, such that they form the sides of an equiangular hexagon.
Compute the sum of all possible values of the area of this hexagon.
8. Alice thinks of four positive integers a ≤ b ≤ c ≤ d satisfying {ab + cd, ac + bd, ad + bc} = {40, 70, 100}.
What are all the possible tuples (a, b, c, d) that Alice could be thinking of?
9. Alice and Bob play the following “point guessing game.” First, Alice marks an equilateral triangle
ABC and a point D on segment BC satisfying BD = 3 and CD = 5. Then, Alice chooses a point P
on line AD and challenges Bob to mark a point Q ̸= P on line AD such that BQ BP
QC = P C . Alice wins if
and only if Bob is unable to choose such a point. If Alice wins, what are the possible values of BP
P C for
the P she chose?
10. There are 21 competitors with distinct skill levels numbered 1, 2, . . . , 21. They participate in a ping-
pong tournament as follows. First, a random competitor is chosen to be “active”, while the rest are
“inactive.” Every round, a random inactive competitor is chosen to play against the current active
one. The player with the higher skill will win and become (or remain) active, while the loser will be
eliminated from the tournament. The tournament lasts for 20 rounds, after which there will only be
one player remaining. Alice is the competitor with skill 11. What is the expected number of games
that she will get to play?

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