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QUESTION PAPERS
WITH SOLUTIONS 2021

1. What is the value of ?

Sol: We have
2. Menkara has a index card. If she shortens the length of one side of this card by inch,
the card would have area square inches. What would the area of the card be in square
inches if instead she shortens the length of the other side by inch?

Sol: We construct the following table:

Therefore, the answer is

3. What is the maximum number of balls of clay of radius that can completely fit inside a cube
of side length assuming the balls can be reshaped but not compressed before they are
packed in the cube?

Sol: The volume of the cube is and the volume of a clay ball

is
Since the balls can be reshaped but not compressed, the maximum number of balls that can

completely fit inside a cube is Approximating with we

have or We simplify to get

from which

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4. Mr. Lopez has a choice of two routes to get to work. Route A is miles long, and his average
speed along this route is miles per hour. Route B is miles long, and his average speed

along this route is miles per hour, except for a -mile stretch in a school zone where his
average speed is miles per hour. By how many minutes is Route B quicker than Route A?

Sol: If Mr. Lopez chooses Route A, then he will spend hour, or minutes.
5. The six-digit number is prime for only one digit What is

Sol: First, modulo or , . Hence, .

Second modulo , . Hence, .
Third, modulo , . Hence, .

Therefore, the answer is .

If Mr. Lopez chooses Route B, then he will spend hour,

or minutes.

Therefore, Route B is quicker than Route A by minutes.

6. The six-digit number is prime for only one digit What is

Sol: First, modulo or , . Hence, .

Second modulo , . Hence, .
Third, modulo , . Hence, .

Therefore, the answer is .

7. As shown in the figure below, point lies on the opposite half-plane determined by
line from point so that . Point lies on so that ,
and is a square. What is the degree measure of ?

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Sol: By angle subtraction, we have Note

that is isosceles, so Finally, we

get degrees.
8. A two-digit positive integer is said to be if it is equal to the sum of its nonzero tens
digit and the square of its units digit. How many two-digit positive integers are cuddly?

Sol: Note that the number By the problem statement,

From this we see
that must be divisible by This only happens when Then, Thus,

there is only cuddly number, which is

9. When a certain unfair die is rolled, an even number is times as likely to appear as an odd
number. The die is rolled twice. What is the probability that the sum of the numbers rolled is
even?

Sol: Since an even number is times more likely to appear than an odd number, the probability of

an even number appearing is . Since the problem states that the sum of the two die must
be even, the numbers must both be even or both be odd. We either have EE or OO, so we

have
10. A school has students and teachers. In the first period, each student is taking one
class, and each teacher is teaching one class. The enrollments in the classes
are and . Let be the average value obtained if a teacher is picked at
random and the number of students in their class is noted. Let be the average value
obtained if a student was picked at random and the number of students in their class,
including the student, is noted. What is ?

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Sol: The formula for expected values is We hav

Therefore, the answer is

11. Emily sees a ship traveling at a constant speed along a straight section of a river. She walks
parallel to the riverbank at a uniform rate faster than the ship. She counts equal steps
walking from the back of the ship to the front. Walking in the opposite direction, she
counts steps of the same size from the front of the ship to the back. In terms of Emily's
equal steps, what is the length of the ship?

Sol: Let be the length of the ship. Then, in the time that Emily walks steps, the ship
moves steps. Also, in the time that Emily walks steps, the ship
moves steps. Since the ship and Emily both travel at some constant

rate, . Dividing both sides by and cross multiplying, we

get , so , and .
12. The base-nine representation of the number is What is the
remainder when is divided by

Sol: Recall that We expand by the definition of bases:

13. Each of balls is randomly and independently painted either black or white with equal
probability. What is the probability that every ball is different in color from more than half of
the other balls?

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Sol: Note that for this restriction to be true, there must be balls of each color. There are a total

of ways to color the balls, and there are ways for three balls chosen to

be painted white. Thus, the answer is .E

14. How many ordered pairs of real numbers satisfy the following system of equations?

Sol: The second equation is . We know that the graph of is a very

simple diamond shape, so let's see if we can reduce this equation to that form:
We now have two
separate graphs for this equation and one graph for the first equation, so let's put it on the
coordinate plane:

We see from the graph that there are intersections, so the answer is .

15. Isosceles triangle has , and a circle with radius is tangent to

line at and to line at . What is the area of the circle that passes through
vertices , , and

Sol: Let be the circle with radius that is tangent to at and to at Note
that Since the opposite angles of quadrilateral are
supplementary, quadrilateral is cyclic.
Let be the circumcircle of quadrilateral It follows that is also the
circumcircle of as shown below:

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 By the Inscribed Angle Theorem, we conclude that is the diameter of By the
Pythagorean Theorem on right we have

Therefore, the area of is

16. The graph of is symmetric about which of the following?
(Here is the greatest integer not exceeding .)

Sol: Note that so .

This means that the graph is symmetric about .

17. An architect is building a structure that will place vertical pillars at the vertices of regular
hexagon , which is lying horizontally on the ground. The six pillars will hold up a
flat solar panel that will not be parallel to the ground. The heights of pillars at , ,
and are , , and meters, respectively. What is the height, in meters, of the pillar at
?

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Sol: The pillar at has height and the pillar at has height Since the solar panel is flat, the
inclination from pillar to pillar is Call the center of the
hexagon Since it follows that the solar panel has height at Since the
solar panel is flat, the heights of the solar panel at and are collinear. Therefore, the

pillar at has height

18. A farmer's rectangular field is partitioned into by grid of rectangular sections as shown
in the figure. In each section the farmer will plant one crop: corn, wheat, soybeans, or
potatoes. The farmer does not want to grow corn and wheat in any two sections that share a
border, and the farmer does not want to grow soybeans and potatoes in any two sections
that share a border. Given these restrictions, in how many ways can the farmer choose crops
to plant in each of the four sections of the field?

Sol: There are possibilities for the top-left section. It follows that the top-right and bottom-left
sections each have possibilities, so they have combinations. We have two cases:

1. The top-right and bottom-left sections have the same crop.

Note that of the combinations of the top-right and bottom-left sections satisfy this case,
from which the bottom-right section has possibilities. Therefore, there
are ways in this case.

2. The top-right and bottom-left sections have different crops.

Note that of the combinations of the top-right and bottom-left sections satisfy this case,
from which the bottom-right section has possibilities. Therefore, there
are ways in this case.

Together, the answer is

19. A disk of radius rolls all the way around the inside of a square of side length and
sweeps out a region of area . A second disk of radius rolls all the way around the outside
of the same square and sweeps out a region of area . The value of can be written

as , where , and are positive integers and and are relatively prime. What
is ?

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Sol: The side length of the inner square traced out by the disk with radius is However,
there is a piece at each corner (bounded by two line segments and one arc) where the
disk never sweeps out. The combined area of these four pieces
is As a result, we have
Now, we consider the second disk. The
part it sweeps is comprised of four quarter circles with radius and four rectangles with side
lengths of and When we add it all together, we have or
We equate the expressions for and then solve for We

get so the answer is

20. For how many ordered pairs of positive integers does
neither nor have two distinct real solutions?

Sol: A quadratic equation does not have two distinct real solutions if and only if the discriminant is
nonpositive. We conclude that:

1. Since does not have real solutions, we have

2. Since does not have real solutions, we have

Squaring the first inequality, we get Multiplying the second inequality by we

get Combining these results, we get We apply casework to
the value of

 If then from which

 If then from which

 If then from which

 If then from which

Together, there are ordered

pairs namely and

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21. Each of the balls is tossed independently and at random into one of the bins. Let be
the probability that some bin ends up with balls, another with balls, and the other three

with balls each. Let be the probability that every bin ends up with balls. What is ?

Sol: For simplicity purposes, we assume that the balls and the bins are both distinguishable.
Recall that there are ways to distribute balls into bins. We have

Therefore, the answer is

22. Inside a right circular cone with base radius and height are three congruent spheres
with radius . Each sphere is tangent to the other two spheres and also tangent to the base
and side of the cone. What is ?

Sol: We can take half of a cross section of the sphere, as such:

Notice that we chose a cross section where one of the spheres was tangent to the lateral
surface of the cone at .

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 To evaluate , we will find and in terms of ; we also know that , so
with this, we can solve . Firstly, to find , we can take a bird's eye view of the cone:

Note that is the centroid of equilateral triangle . Also, since all of the medians of an
equilateral triangle are also altitudes, we want to find two-thirds of the altitude from to ;
this is because medians cut each other into a to ratio. This equilateral triangle has a side

length of , therefore it has an altitude of length ; two thirds of this is , so

To evaluate in terms of , we will extend past point to at point . is

similar to . Also, is the angle bisector of . Therefore, by the angle

bisector theorem, . Also, , so , so .

This means that We

have that and that ,

so . We also were given that .

Therefore, we have This is a simple linear equation in terms of . We can

solve for to get

23. For each positive integer , let be twice the number of positive integer divisors of ,
and for , let . For how many values of is

Sol: First, we can test values that would make true. For this to happen must
have divisors, which means its prime factorization is in the form or ,
where and are prime numbers. Listing out values less than which have these prime
factorizations, we find for , and just for .
Here especially catches our eyes, as this means if one of , each

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 of will all be . This is because (as given in the
problem statement), so were , plugging this in we get ,
and thus the pattern repeats. Hence, as long as for a , such that and
, must be true, which also immediately makes all our previously listed
numbers, where , possible values of .

We also know that if were to be any of these numbers, would satisfy as well.
Looking through each of the possibilities aside from , we see that could only possibly
be equal to and , and still have less than or equal to . This would mean must
have , or divisors, and testing out, we see that will then be of the form , or .
The only two values less than or equal to would be and respectively. From here

there are no more possible values, so tallying our possibilities we count values
(Namely ).
24. Each of the edges of a cube is labeled or . Two labelings are considered different even
if one can be obtained from the other by a sequence of one or more rotations and/or
reflections. For how many such labelings is the sum of the labels on the edges of each of
the faces of the cube equal to ?

Sol: For simplicity, we will name this cube by vertices, as shown below.

Note that for each face of this cube, two edges are labeled and two edges are
labeled For all twelve edges of this cube, we conclude that six edges are labeled and
six edges are labeled

We apply casework to face Recall that there are ways to label its edges:

1. Opposite edges have the same label.

There are ways to label the edges of We will consider one of the ways, then
multiply the count by Without loss of generality, we assume that are
labeled respectively:

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 We apply casework to the label of as shown below.

We have such labelings for this case.

2. Opposite edges have different labels.

There are ways to label the edges of We will consider one of the ways, then
multiply the count by Without loss of generality, we assume that are
labeled respectively:

We apply casework to the labels of and as shown below.

We have such labelings for this case.

Therefore, we have such labelings in total.

25. A quadratic polynomial with real coefficients and leading coefficient is
called if the equation is satisfied by exactly three real numbers.
Among all the disrespectful quadratic polynomials, there is a unique such
polynomial for which the sum of the roots is maximized. What is ?

Sol: Let and be the roots of .

Then, . The solutions
to is the union of the solutions to
and
Note that one of these two quadratics
has one solution (a double root) and the other has two as there are exactly three solutions.
WLOG, assume that the quadratic with one root is .
Then, the discriminant is , so . Thus, , but
for to have two solutions, it must be the case
that . It follows that the sum of the roots of is ,

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 whose maximum value occurs when . Solving for yields .

Therefore, , so .
Remarks

 For to have two solutions, the

discriminant must be positive. From here, we get
that , so . Hence, is negative,
so .

 Set . Now , for which the maximum occurs

when .

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