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2021 Fall AMC 10A

All 25 problems from the 2021 Fall AMC 10A. Take it as a timed mock test — 1:15:00 on the clock, scored the way the real contest is — or read through the problems and open any of them for hints and a worked solution.

25 problems · 6 points correct, 1.5 for blank, 0 for wrong

  1. What is the value of the following expression? (2112−2021)2169\dfrac{(2112-2021)^2}{169}
  2. Menkara has a 4×64 \times 6 index card. If she shortens the length of one side of this card by 11 inch, the card would have area 1818 square inches. What would the area of the card be in square inches if instead she shortens the length of the other side by 11 inch?
  3. What is the maximum number of balls of clay with radius 22 that can completely fit inside a cube of side length 66 assuming that the balls can be reshaped but not compressed before they are packed in the cube?
  4. Mr. Lopez has a choice of two routes to get to work. Route A is 66 miles long, and his average speed along this route is 3030 miles per hour. Route B is 55 miles long, and his average speed along this route is 4040 miles per hour, except for a 12\dfrac{1}{2}-mile stretch in a school zone where his average speed is 2020 miles per hour. By how many minutes is Route B quicker than Route A?
  5. The six-digit number 2‾ 0‾ 2‾ 1‾ 0‾ A‾\underline{2}\,\underline{0}\,\underline{2}\,\underline{1}\,\underline{0}\,\underline{A} is prime for only one digit A.A. What is A?A?
  6. Elmer the emu takes 4444 equal strides to walk between consecutive telephone poles on a rural road. Oscar the ostrich can cover the same distance in 1212 equal leaps. The telephone poles are evenly spaced, and the 4141st pole along this road is exactly one mile (52805280 feet) from the first pole. How much longer, in feet, is Oscar’s leap than Elmer’s stride?
  7. As shown in the figure below, point EE lies in the opposite half-plane determined by line CDCD from point AA so that ∠CDE=110∘.\angle CDE = 110^\circ. Point FF lies on AD‾\overline{AD} so that DE=DF,DE=DF, and ABCDABCD is a square. What is the degree measure of ∠AFE?\angle AFE?
  8. A two-digit positive integer is said to be cuddly 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?
  9. When a certain unfair die is rolled, an even number is 33 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?
  10. A school has 100100 students and 55 teachers. In the first period, each student is taking one class, and each teacher is teaching one class. The enrollments in the classes are 50,50, 20,20, 20,20, 5,5, and 5.5. Let tt be the average value obtained if a teacher is picked at random and the number of students in their class is noted. Let ss 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 t−s?t-s?
  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 210210 equal steps walking from the back of the ship to the front. Walking in the opposite direction, she counts 4242 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?
  12. The base-nine representation of the number NN is 27,006,000,0529.27{,}006{,}000{,}052_9. What is the remainder when NN is divided by 5?5?
  13. Each of 66 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 55 balls?
  14. How many ordered pairs (x,y)(x,y) of real numbers satisfy the following system of equations? x2+3y=9,(∣x∣+∣y∣−4)2=1.\begin{aligned} x^2+3y&=9, \\ (|x|+|y|-4)^2&=1. \end{aligned}
  15. Isosceles triangle ABCABC has AB=AC=36,AB = AC = 3\sqrt6, and a circle with radius 525\sqrt2 is tangent to line ABAB at BB and to line ACAC at C.C. What is the area of the circle that passes through vertices A,A, B,B, and C?C?
  16. Consider the function f(x)=∣⌊x⌋∣−∣⌊1−x⌋∣f(x) = |\lfloor x \rfloor| - |\lfloor 1 - x \rfloor| Its graph is symmetric about which of the following? (Here ⌊x⌋\lfloor x \rfloor is the greatest integer not exceeding x.x.)
  17. An architect is building a structure that will place vertical pillars at the vertices of regular hexagon ABCDEF,ABCDEF, 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 A,A, B,B, and CC are 12,12, 9,9, and 1010 meters, respectively. What is the height, in meters, of the pillar at E?E?
  18. A farmer’s rectangular field is partitioned into a 22 by 22 grid of 44 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?
  19. A disk of radius 11 rolls all the way around the inside of a square of side length s>4s > 4 and sweeps out a region of area A.A. A second disk of radius 11 rolls all the way around the outside of the same square and sweeps out a region of area 2A.2A. The value of ss can be written as a+bπc,a+\dfrac{b\pi}{c}, where a,a, b,b, and cc are positive integers and bb and cc are relatively prime. What is a+b+c?a+b+c?
  20. For how many ordered pairs (b,c)(b,c) of positive integers does neither x2+bx+c=0x^2+bx+c=0 nor x2+cx+b=0x^2+cx+b=0 have two distinct real solutions?
  21. Each of 2020 balls is tossed independently and at random into one of the 55 bins. Let pp be the probability that some bin ends up with 33 balls, another with 55 balls, and the other three with 44 balls each. Let qq be the probability that every bin ends up with 44 balls. What is pq?\dfrac{p}{q}?
  22. Inside a right circular cone with base radius 55 and height 1212 are three congruent spheres each with radius r.r. Each sphere is tangent to the other two spheres and also tangent to the base and side of the cone. What is r?r?
  23. For each positive integer n,n, let f1(n)f_1(n) be twice the number of positive integer divisors of n,n, and for j≥2,j \ge 2, let fj(n)=f1(fj−1(n)).f_j(n) = f_1(f_{j-1}(n)). For how many values of n≤50n \le 50 is f50(n)=12?f_{50}(n) = 12?
  24. Each of the 1212 edges of a cube is labeled 00 or 1.1. 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 66 faces of the cube equal to 2?2?
  25. A quadratic polynomial p(x)p(x) with real coefficients and leading coefficient 11 is called disrespectful if the equation p(p(x))=0p(p(x))=0 is satisfied by exactly three real numbers. Among all the disrespectful quadratic polynomials, there is a unique such polynomial p~(x)\tilde{p}(x) for which the sum of the roots is maximized. What is p~(1)?\tilde{p}(1)?

0 of 25 answered. Each problem left blank still scores 1.5 points.

Practise one problem at a time, with hints and solutions, on the practice page. Or work through the same ideas across every year by topic, or browse the full AMC 10 archive.