QuestionsforPreliminary(difficulty:easy,problemsolving)

1. DuringJalanRaya,Najibwas givensomepeanutbeans andapairofbowls by his uncle.

He was told to divide the beans into the bowls. His uncle will then count the number of
beans in both bowls and then multiply the numbers, the result will be the dollar amount
thathisunclewillgivetoNajibforHariRaya.
WhatshouldNajibdotomaximizehis$?
2. Thenumber479hastheinterestingpropertythatwhenitis:
a. dividedby6,theremainderis5
b. dividedby5,theremainderis4
c. dividedby4,theremainderis3
d. dividedby3,theremainderis2
e. dividedby2,theremainderis1
Whatisthesmallestnumberwiththesameproperty?
3. Bill Gates managed to sell a lot of copies (more than a million!) of Microsoft Windows
such that he gained $1,000,000,000.00 in revenue. The copies were sold at the same
price each. Interestingly, neither the price nor the number of copies had any zero in the
numbers.
Howmanycopiesweresoldathowmuchpriceeach?
4. Noticethat23x96=32x69
There are several such pairs of twodigit numbers where their product stays the same
when the order of the digits is reversed.Andthis does notincludethetrivialones like:22
x55=22x55,12x21=21x12,andsuch.
Howmanycanyoufind?Investigate!
5. This is a very old puzzle. It tells of a showman travelling the countryside on tour with a
wolf, a goat, and a cabbage. He comes to a river bank and the only means of getting
across is a small boat which can hold him with only one of the wolf, the goat or the
cabbage.
Unfortunately he dare not leave the wolf alone with the goat or the goat alone with the
cabbage for the wolf would eat the goat and the goatwouldeatthecabbage.Aftersome
thought the showman realised that he could use the boat to transport himself and allhis
belongingssafelyacrosstheriver.Howdidhedoit?

6. After a flood three married couples found themselves surrounded by water, and had to
escape from their holiday hotel in a boat that would only hold three persons at a time.
Each husband was so jealous that he would not allow his wife to be in the boat or on
eitherbankwithanyotherman(ormen)unlesshewashimselfpresent.
Find a way of getting the couples across the watertosafety whichrequires thesmallest
numberofboatcrossings.Swimmingorhelicoptersarenotallowed!

QuestionsforPreliminary(difficulty:easy,directquestion)
1. A right triangle ABC has its right angle at / ACB . AB is twice as long as AC . How
manydegreesisangle / ABC ?
2. Can afractionwhosenumeratoris less thanits denominatorbeequaltoafractionwhose
numeratorisgreaterthanitsdenominator?Explainandgiveexampleifapplicable.
3. There are many ways in which the digits 1, 2, 3, 4, ... 9 can be arranged to form a
fourdigit number and a fivedigit number, forexample5324and89716,butonly oneway
whichmaximisestheirproduct.Canyoufindit?
4. ThisisariddleattributedtoEuclidfromAD300.
A mule and a donkey were walking along laden with sacks ofcorn.Themulesaidtothe
donkey, 'If you gave me one of your sacks, I would be carrying twice as much as you.
ButifIgaveyouone,wewouldbothbecarryingequalburdens.'
Howmanysacksofcornweretheyeachcarrying?
5. Madam Rose went to supermarket to buy some fruit for her daughter Yasmin and her
friends whocamefortheirstudy group.Sheboughtapples at40cents eachandoranges
at 70 cents each. She paid for the fruits and got 10 cents change for her $30 cash.
Yasminandherfriendseachhadequalshareofthefruits.
HowmanyfriendsdidJasminehaveatthestudygroup?
Howmanyapplesandorangesdidtheyeachhave?
6. The sequence below is called Fibonacci sequence. Can you identify the pattern and
continuethesequenceforthenextfivenumbers?
1,1,2,3,5,8,13,...
7. Four Fours is a famous puzzle playing with four number 4s. The puzzle is actually
simple, by only using four pieces of number 4s, and any mathematical notationyoulike,
makeallthenumbersfrom0to100.Forexample,0=4444.
Forthiscompetitionsquestion,make1to10usingthesefourfours.

QuestionsforSemifinal(difficulty:medium,problemsolving)
1. A hunter was making a camp when he saw a bear. He then chased the bear towards
South for a kilometer, and then he make a right turn towards West for a kilometer, and
then make another right turn towards North for a kilometer, suddenly hes back at his
camp.
Whatisthecolorofthebear?
2. There are five circles with radius of: 50 cm, 40 cm, 20 cm, 20 cm and 10 cm. The four
smaller circles are to be put overlapping with the largest circle. Show how to overlap
them so that the nonoverlapping part of the largestcirclehas thesameareaas thetotal
areaofnonoverlappingpartsofthesmallercircles.Explainyouranswer.
3. Ah Luck loves number 8, its his lucky number. Everytime he sees a digit8heconsider
hehasoneluck.So,youcansayhehasoneluckinthesequence1,2,3,...,8,9,10.
a. Howmanylucksdoeshehaveinthesequence1,2,3,...,100?
b. Howmanylucksdoeshehaveinthesequence1,2,3,...,1,000?
c. Howmanylucksdoeshehaveinthesequence1,2,3,...,1,000,000?
4. Great Grandmother Bountiful, who only had daughters, realised that each of them had
produced as many sons as they had sisters, and no daughters. In turn, each of her
grandsons had produced as many daughters as he had brothers. She was delighted to
recount this to her friends and, furthermore, that the total number of her daughters,
grandsonsandgreatgranddaughterswasthesameasherage!
Howoldwasshe?
5. At Zoe's party, Anna, Betty and Candice are standing in line behind each other, with
Candice at the back able to see Anna and Betty, Betty in the middle able to see Anna,
andAnnaatthefrontunabletoseetheothers.
From a collection of two blue and three red paper hats, Zoe places a hat on eachofthe
heads of Anna, Betty and Candice, so they can only see the hats of those in front of
them,anddonotknowwhichhatsareunused.
Zoe then asks each of them, in turn, if they know what colour hat they are wearing.
Candice, at the back, replies No followed by a 'No' from Betty. But then Anna, who
could see none of the hats, was able to give the colour ofherhatwithconfidence.What
colourwasit?
6. An army on the march through the jungle came to a river which was wide, deep and

infested with crocodiles. On the far bank they could see two native boys with a canoe.
The canoe can hold one manwithhis rifleandkitortwoboys.Howdoes thearmy cross
theriver?
8. Ainun stays at Bukit Batok East area which is 3 bus stops away from Bukit Batok
Interchange. He can take either bus 106 or 77 from the interchange to reach home. As
Singapore busses are pretty much on time, and both two bus services has 10 minutes
interval, he never bothered to check their timetables and just wait for whicheverservice
startsfirstwheneverhereachBukitBatokInterchangefromtheMRTstation.
After sometime he realized thathegotintobus 106farmoreoftenthan77.Hedecidedto
keep a regular check on which service he caught and surprisingly heonly caught77on
average once every 10 times. How can this phenomena be explained, considering that
bothbusserviceshasthesame10minutesinterval?

QuestionsforSemifinal(difficulty:medium,directquestion)
1. Isitpossibletofindapairofintegersaandbsuchthat ab = 2 ?
2. Dzuizz is having a birthday party, eight people were present including his parents and
himself. How many cuts at minimum do you need to cut his birthday cake into 8 equal
pieces?
3. Whereonearthcanyoufindatriangleeachofwhoseinterioranglesis90?
9. Professor Danzig enjoyed looking for patterns in numbers, and on her birthday in 1992
she was particularly pleased when she realised that her age in years multiplied by the
dayintheyearcameto11,111.
Whenwassheborn?
10. The local water company wanted to build a new storage tank to supply the needs of a
large housing estate. They calculated that they needed the tank to have a capacity of
4 , 0 00 m3 , and they decided to construct it as an opentop rectangular tank. Itwasto
be made from reinforced concrete panels whose cost was proportional to the interior
surfaceareaofthetank.
Whatshapeshouldtheymakeittominimisethecost?

QuestionsforFinal(difficulty:hard,problemsolving)
1. Hakim and his friends wereplayingagamewithnumbers.They wrotenumbers from1to
10 on a white board. They then take turns to choose and erase two numbers from the
board and replace them with their difference. For example, if Hakim choose 2 and 7, he
willerasethembothandthenwrite5ontheboard.
Prove that when the game ends with only one number remaining on the board, that
numberwillalwaysbeanoddnumber.
HINT:trykeepingtrackofsumofthenumbersremainingontheboard
2. Factorial in mathematics is multiplication of integers from 1 until the number being
factorialed and is represented by ! (exclamation mark). For example,
4 ! = 1 2 3 4 = 24 . Note that 5 ! = 120 hasonezeroatitsend.Howmanyzeros
arethereattheendof 1 00! ?
3. Triplets ofintegernumbers (a, b, c) thatcanbecomelengths ofarighttriangles sides is
calledPythagoreanTriple.Thismeans a 2 + b 2 = c2 .
(3, 4, 5) is the only Pythagorean Triple with three consecutive numbers. However, for
any odd number a , there will always be b and c such that b and c are consecutive
numbersand (a, b, c) isaPythagoreanTriple.
Investigatehowtofindthevaluesofsuch (a, b, c) givenanoddnumber a .