Combinatorics

PART – I : PRE RMO

1. There are seven even greeting cards each of a different colour and seven envelopes of the same seven
colours .Find the number of ways in which the cards can be put in the envelopes so that exactly four of
the cards go into the envelopes of the right colour
2. In how many ways is it possible to separate the nine letters a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i into three non-empty
batches ?
3. There an n persons sitting around a circular table. Each person shakes hands with everybody except
the person sitting on both sides of him. The total number of hand shakes are 90. Then find n.
4. In a plane there are 37 straight lines of which 13 pass through the point A and 11 pass through the
point B. Besides, no three lines pass through one point, no lines passes through both points A and B,
and no two are parallel. Then find the number of intersection points the lines have.
5. Find the number of selections of six letters from the letters of the word ' K A R N A T A K A'
6. Find the number of ways by which 4 green, 3 red and 2 white balls can be arranged in a row such that
no two balls of the same colour are together. All balls of the same colour are identical
7. There are 10 stations enroute. A train has to be stopped at 3 of them. Let N be the no of ways is which
the train can be stopped if atleast two of the stopping stations are consecutive. Find N.
8. Number n is selected from the set {1, 2, ........200}. and the number 2n + 3n + 5n is formed. Find the total
number of ways of selecting n so that the formed number is divisible by 4
9. Find of the total number of words which are formed by using the all the letters of the word "SUCCESS"
such the no two alike letters are together
10. Let N be the number of integer solutions of the equation n1+ n2 + n3 + n4 = 17 when
n  1, n2  –1, n3  3, n4  0. If N = 17CK ,then find K .
11. The number of different permutations of all the letters of the word PERMUTATION such that any two
consecutive letters in the arrangement are neither both vowels nor both identical is K . 5! . 5! . Find K
12. There are ten boxes numbered from 1 to 10 and 10 balls numbered from 1 to 10. If the number of ways
of putting all balls in given boxes such that no box remains empty, odd numbered balls go to odd
numbered box and no ball goes to the box having same number which is written on the ball is K2, then
find K .
13. Let set A = {1, 2, 3 .........50}. Set B is a subset of A and B has exactly 20 elements. if the sum of
elements of all possible subsets of B is 49C19 . × 25 × K
14. Mr. john has x children by his first wife and Ms. Bashu has x + 1 children by her first husband. They
marry and have children of their own. The whole family has 10 children. Assuming that two children of
the same parents do not fight. Find the maximum number of fight that can take place among children
15. What is the total number of ways of selecting atleast one item from each of the two sets containing 6
identical items each?

PART – II : RMO
1. All the 7-digit numbers containing each of the digits 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 exactly once, and not divisible by 5,
are arranged in increasing order. Find the 3200th number in the list
2. Determine the number of subsets of {1,2,3 ....... 70} whose sum is larger than 1243.
3. Find the number of 4 × 4 array where entries are from the set {0,1,2,3} and which are such that the sum
of the numbers in each of the four rows and in each of the four columns is divisible by 4.
4. Find the number of 9 digit natural numbers in which each digit appears at least thrice.

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 Combinatorics

5. Find all 6-digit natural numbers a1a2a3a4a5a6 formed by using the digits 1,2,3,4,5,6
once each such that number a1 a2a3........ak is divisible by k for 1 k  6.

6. In a group of 10 people, the sum of the age of the members is 542 years. Prove that four members can
be chosen so that their ages is not less than 216 years.

7. Find number of three digit numbers equal to the sum of the factorials of their digits.

8. Find the sum of all four digit numbers formed by the digits {1,2,3.......9} in which exactly two digits are
prime and repetition of digits is not allowed

9. If 11 distinct integers are chosen from among 1,2,3 ......20 then show that selection includes at least
one pair of integers which are relatively prime.

10. Let n be a positive integer. Find the maximum number of non congruent triangles whose side lengths
are integers less than or equal to n.

11. Find all the three digit numbers for which one obtains when dividing the number by 11, the sum of the
squares of the digits of the initials

12. Find all 8-digit numbers such that the sum of their digits is 14 and each of the digits 0,1,2,3,4 occurs at
least once in them.

13. Find all 7 digit numbers formed by using only the digits 5 and 7 and divisible by both 5 and 7.

14. Two boxes contain 65 balls of several different sizes. Each ball is white, black, red or yellow. If you take
any 5 balls of the same colour at least two of them will always be of the same size (radius) Prove that
there are at least 3 balls which lie in the same box, have same colour and have same size (radius)

15. A set of 10 positive integers in given such that decimal expansion of each of them has two digits. Prove
that there are two disjoint subsets of the set with equal sum of their elements.
501
16. Find the number of solutions of the equation x
i1
i  1501 , where xi's are odd natural numbers:

17. Find the number of different seven digit numbers that can be written using only the three digits 1, 2, 3
with the condition that the digit 2 occurs atleast 2 times in each number.
18. Find the number of permutations of the letters of the word CONTRADICTORY such that neither the
pattern "CON" nor "RAD" nor "ORY" appears

19. Find the number of quintuples (x, y, z, u, v) of positive integers satisfying both equations
x + y + z + u = 100 and x + y + z + v = 70

20. In how many ways can 10 persons take seats in a row of 24 seats so that no two persons take
consecutive seats.

21. In how many we can put 6 identical white balls and 5 identical black balls in 10 different boxes if each
box must contain atleast one ball.

PART – I : PREVIOUS ASKED QUESTION FOR PRE RMO

PRMO (2012)
1. A postman has to deliver five letters to five different houses. Mischievously, he posts one letter through
each door without looking to see if it is the correct address. In how many different ways could he do this
so that exactly two of the five houses receive the correct letters ?

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 Combinatorics

PRMO (2013)
2. There are n – 1 red balls, n green balls and n + 1 blue balls in a bag. The number of ways of choosing
two balls from the bag that have different colours is 299. What is the value of n ?
3. To each element of the set S = {1, 2, ….., 1000} a colour is assigned. Suppose that for any two
elements a, b of S, if 15 divides a + b then they are both assigned the same colour. What is the
maximum possible number of distinct colours used ?

PRMO (2015) WB
4. Consider all the 7-digit numbers containing each of the digits 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 exactly once, and not
divisible by 5. Arrange them in decreasing order. What is the 2015-th number (from the beginning) in
this list?
 200  200
5. Determine the largest 2-digit prime factor of the integer   , i.e., C100.
 100 
2015
2  2015 
2015
6. Find the sum of all the distinct prime divisors of  r   i.e.,  r 2 .2015Cr
r 0  r  r=0

7. Let n!, the factorial of a positive integer n, be defined as the product of the integers 1, 2 , ....... n. In
other words, n! = 1 × 2 × ………. × n. What is the number of zeros at the end of the integer
102! + 112! + 122! + _ _ _ + 992!?
8. Find the number of ordered pairs of positive integers (a, b) such that a + b = 1000 and neither a nor b
has a zero digit. Note that (2,998) and (998,2) should be counted as two distinct solutions.
9. Find the largest positive integer n such that 2n divides 34096 – 1.
PRMO (2015)
10. How many line segments have both their endpoints located at the vertices of a given cube?
11. At a party, each man danced with exactly four women and each woman danced with exactly three men.
Nine men attended the party. How many women attended the party?
PRMO (2016) Chd
12. On a stormy night ten guests came to dinner party and left their shoes outside the room in order to
keep the carpet clean. After the dinner there was a blackout, and the guests leaving one by one, put on
at random, any pair of shoes big enough for their feet,(Each pair of shoes stays together). Any guest
who could not find a pair big enough spent the night there. What is the largest number of guests who
might have had to spend the night there ?
PRMO (2016) Delhi
13. There are three kinds of fruits in the market. How many ways are there to purchase 25 fruits from
among them if each kind has at least 25 of its fruit available?
PRMO (2016) WB
14. Find the coefficient of a5b5c5d6 in the expansion of the following expression.
(bcd + acd + abd + abc)7
15. Find the total number of times the digit ‘2’ appears in the set of integers {1, 2,…….2016}
For example, the digit ‘2’ appears twice in the integer 229.
16. Find the number of pairs of positive integers (m, n), with m  n, such that the ‘least common multiple’
(LCM) of m and n equals 600.
PRMO (2017)
17. How many positive integers less than 1000 have the property that the sum of the digits of each such
number is divisible by 7 and the number itself is divisible by 3 ?

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 Combinatorics

18. There are five cities A, B, C, D, E on a certain island. Each city is connected to every other city by road.
In how many ways can a person starting from city A come back to A after visiting some cities without
visiting a city more than once and without taking the same road more than once ? (The order in which
he visits the cities also matters. e.g., the routes A  B  C  A and A  C  B  A are different.)
19. There are eight rooms on the first floor of a hotel, with four rooms on each side of the corridor,
symmetrically situated (that is each room is exactly opposite to one other room). Four guests have to
be accommodated in four of the eight rooms (that is, one in each) such that no two guests are in
adjacent rooms or in opposite rooms. In how many ways can the guests be accommodated?
20. Find the number of ordered triples (a, b, c) of positive integers such that abc = 108.
21. Suppose in the plane 10 pair wise nonparallel lines intersect one another. What is the maximum
possible number of polygons (with finite areas) that can be formed?
PRMO (2018)
22. There are several tea cups in the kitchen, some with handle and the others without handles. The
number of ways of selecting two cups without a handle and three with a handle is exactly 1200. What is
the maximum possible number of cups in the kitchen ?
23. Determine the number of 8-tuples ( 1,2 ,...,8 ) such that 1,2 ,...,8  {1, 1} and
1 2 2 3 3 ...  8 8 is a multiple of 3.

PRMO (2019)
24. Five persons wearing badges with numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 are seated on 5 chairs around a circular table.
In how many ways can they be seated so that no two persons whose badges have consecutive
numbers are seated next to each other? (Two arrangements obtained by rotation around the table are
considered different.)
25. In how many ways can a pair of parallel diagonals of a regular polygon of 10 sides be selected
26. A 1n rectangle (n  1) is divided into n unit (11) squares. Each square of this rectangle is coloured
red, blue or green. Let f(n) be the number of colourings of the rectangle in which there are an even
number of red squares. What is the largest prime factor of f(9) / f(3) ? (The number of red squares can
be zero)

27. We will say that a rearrangement of the letters of a word has no fixed letters if. When the
rearrangement is placed directly below the word, no column has the same letter repeated. For instance,
H B R A T A is a rearrangement with no fixed letters of B H A R A T. How many distinguishable
rearrangement with no fixed letters does B H A R A T have ? (The two A’s are considered identical)

PART – II : PREVIOUSLY ASKED QUESTION OF RMO

1. Find the number of all 6-digit natural numbers such that the sum of their digits is 10 and each of the
digits 0, 1, 2, 3 occurs at least once in them. [RMO-2008]
2. Find the number of all integer-sided isosceles obtuse-angled triangles with perimeter 2008.
[RMO-2008]
3. Find the sum of all 3-digit natural numbers which contain at least one odd digit and at least one even
digit. [RMO-2009]
4. Let (a1, a2, a3 . . . , a2011) be a permutation (that is a rearrangement) of the numbers 1, 2, 3 . . . , 2011.
Show that there exist two numbers j, k. such that 1  j < k  2011 and |aj – j| = |ak –k|. [RMO-2011]
5. Consider a 20-sided convex polygon K, with vertices A1, A2, . . . . , A20 in that order. Find the number of
ways in which three sides of K can be chosen so that every pair among them has at least two sides of
K between them. (For example (A1A2, A4A5, A11A12) is an admissible triple while (A1A2, A4A5, A19A20) is
not). [RMO-2011]
6. A finite non-empty set S of integers is called 3-good if the the sum of the elements of S is
divisible by 3. Find the number of 3-good non-empty subsets of {0, 1, 2, . . . , 9}. [RMO-2013]

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 Combinatorics

7. Suppose for some positive integers r and s, the digits of 2r is obtained by permuting the digits of 2s in
decimal expansion. Prove that r = s. [RMO-2014]
8. Is it possible to write the numbers 17, 18, 19, ….. 32 in a 4 × f grid of unit squares, with one number in
each square, such that the product of the numbers in each 2 × 2 sub-grids AMRG, GRND, MBHR and
RHCN is divisible by 16? [RMO-2014]
G
A D

M N

B H C

9. Find the number of all 6-digit natural numbers having exactly three odd digits and three even digits.
[RMO-2016]
10. Consider a chessboard of size 8 units × 8 units (i.e. each small square on the board has a side length
of 1 unit). Let S be the set of all the 81 vertices of all the squares on the board. What is number of line
segments whose vertices are in S1 and whose length is a positive integer ? (The segments need not be
parallel to the sides of the board.) [RMO-2017]
11. There is a pack of 27 distinct cards, and each card has three values on it. The first value is a shape
from {, ,} ; the second value is a letter from {A,B,C} ; and the third value is a number from {1,2,3}.
In how many ways can we choose an unordered set of 3 cards from the pack, so that no two of the
chosen cards have two matching values ?
For example, we can choose {A1, B2, B3}
But we cannot choose {A1,  B2, C1} [RMO-2019]

12. Suppose 91 distinct positive integers greater than 1 are given such that there are at least 456 pairs,
among them which are relatively prime. Show that one can find four integers a, b, c, d among them
such that gcd (a, b) = gcd (b, c) = gcd (c, d) = gcd (d, a) = 1. [RMO-2019]

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 Combinatorics

PART – I : PRE RMO

1. 70 2. 3025 3. n = 15 4. 535 5. 19
6. 79 7. 64 8. 99 9. 96 10. 3
11. 57 12. 44 13. 51 14. 33 15. 36

PART – II : RMO
1. 6172453 2. 269 3. 49 4. 1,98,207
5. 123654 , 321654 7. 1
8. 1111[2 + 3 + 5 + 7)3C1. 5C 2.3! + (1 + 4 + 6 +8 + 9) 3C2.5C1.3!]

 n(n  2)(2n  5)
 , n is even
24
10.  11. 550, 803
 (n  1)(n  3)(2n  1) , n is odd
 24
7 6! 6! 5! 7!
12. C2. + 7C2. + 7C3 + 7C1.
3!. 2!.2!. 2!. 3!.2!
13. 7 7 7 5 7 7 5, 7 7 5 7 5 7 5, 5 5 7 7 7 7 5, 7 5 7 5 5 7 5, 5 7 7 7 7 5 5, 7755755
5 7 5 5 5 7 5, 5 5 5 7 7 5 5, 7555555
1000 13! 11! 11! 11! 9! 9! 9! 7!
16. C500 17. 37 – 27 – 7.26 18. 4
– – 3
– + + + –
(2!) 2!.2! (2!) 2!.2! 2! 2!.2! 2! 2!

69 15 10! 10! 10!

19. C3 20. C10 . 10! 21. + +
6!.3! 5!.4! 5!.4!

PART – I : PREVIOUS ASKED QUESTION FOR PRE RMO

1. 20 2. 10 3. 8 4. 4712536 5. 61
6. 61 7. 24 8. 738 9. 14 10. 28
11. 12 12. 5 13. 351 14. 630 15. 619
16. 53 17. 28 18. 60 19. 48 20. 60
21. 36 22. 29 23. 88 24. 10 25. 45
26. 37 27. 84

PART – II : PREVIOUSLY ASKED QUESTION OF RMO

1. 490 2. 86 3. 370775 5. 520
6. 351 8. Not possible 9. 281250 10. 780
11. 1278

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