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2007/08 AHSMC Part 1 Problem 14

Problem 14 of 16

Five students took part in a contest consisting of six true-or-false questions. Student #i\#i gave the answer T to question #j\#j if and only if i<ji < j. The total number of incorrect answers is 88 or 99, and there are more incorrect answers of T than incorrect answers of F. The student who has both an incorrect answer of T and an incorrect answer of F is

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Solution

The number of incorrect answers for each of questions 11 and 66 is 00 or 55. The number of incorrect answers for each of questions 22 and 55 is 11 or 44. The number of incorrect answers for each of questions 33 and 44 is 22 or 33. A total of 88 incorrect answers can only be made up from 0+1+3+3+1+00+1+3+3+1+0. However, we would have an equal number of incorrect answers of T and incorrect answers of F. Hence the total must be 99, and it can be made up from either 0+1+2+2+4+00+1+2+2+4+0 or 0+4+2+2+1+00+4+2+2+1+0. However, the latter yields more incorrect answers of F than incorrect answers of T. It follows that the correct answers for the six questions are F, F, F, T, F and T respectively. Only student #4\#4 has both an incorrect answer of T (for question 55) and an incorrect answer of F (for question 44). The answer is (D).