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2012 AMC 12A

All 25 problems from the 2012 AMC 12A. 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. A bug crawls along a number line, starting at −2.-2. It crawls to −6,-6, then turns around and crawls to 5.5. How many units does the bug crawl altogether?
  2. Cagney can frost a cupcake every 2020 seconds and Lacey can frost a cupcake every 3030 seconds. Working together, how many cupcakes can they frost in 55 minutes?
  3. A box 22 centimeters high, 33 centimeters wide, and 55 centimeters long can hold 4040 grams of clay. A second box with twice the height, three times the width, and the same length as the first box can hold nn grams of clay. What is n?n?
  4. In a bag of marbles, 35\dfrac{3}{5} of the marbles are blue and the rest are red. If the number of red marbles is doubled and the number of blue marbles stays the same, what fraction of the marbles will be red?
  5. A fruit salad consists of blueberries, raspberries, grapes, and cherries. The fruit salad has a total of 280280 pieces of fruit. There are twice as many raspberries as blueberries, three times as many grapes as cherries, and four times as many cherries as raspberries. How many cherries are there in the fruit salad?
  6. The sums of three whole numbers taken in pairs are 12,12, 17,17, and 19.19. What is the middle number?
  7. Mary divides a circle into 1212 sectors. The central angles of these sectors, measured in degrees, are all integers and they form an arithmetic sequence. What is the degree measure of the smallest possible sector angle?
  8. An iterative average of the numbers 1,1, 2,2, 3,3, 4,4, and 55 is computed in the following way. Arrange the five numbers in some order. Find the mean of the first two numbers, then find the mean of that with the third number, then the mean of that with the fourth number, and finally the mean of that with the fifth number. What is the difference between the largest and smallest possible values that can be obtained using this procedure?
  9. A year is a leap year if and only if the year number is divisible by 400400 (such as 20002000) or is divisible by 44 but not by 100100 (such as 20122012). The 200200th anniversary of the birth of novelist Charles Dickens was celebrated on February 7,7, 2012,2012, a Tuesday. On what day of the week was Dickens born?
  10. A triangle has area 30,30, one side of length 10,10, and the median to that side of length 9.9. Let θ\theta be the acute angle formed by that side and the median. What is sin⁡θ?\sin\theta?
  11. Alex, Mel, and Chelsea play a game that has 66 rounds. In each round there is a single winner, and the outcomes of the rounds are independent. For each round the probability that Alex wins is 12,\dfrac12, and Mel is twice as likely to win as Chelsea. What is the probability that Alex wins three rounds, Mel wins two rounds, and Chelsea wins one round?
  12. A square region ABCDABCD is externally tangent to the circle with equation x2+y2=1x^2 + y^2 = 1 at the point (0,1)(0, 1) on the side CD.CD. Vertices AA and BB are on the circle with equation x2+y2=4.x^2 + y^2 = 4. What is the side length of this square?
  13. Paula the painter and her two helpers each paint at constant, but different, rates. They always start at 8:008{:}00 AM and all three always take the same amount of time to eat lunch. On Monday the three of them painted 50%50\% of a house, quitting at 4:004{:}00 PM. On Tuesday, when Paula wasn’t there, the two helpers painted only 24%24\% of the house and quit at 2:122{:}12 PM. On Wednesday Paula worked by herself and finished the house by working until 7:127{:}12 PM. How long, in minutes, was each day’s lunch break?
  14. The closed curve in the figure is made up of 99 congruent circular arcs each of length 2π3,\dfrac{2\pi}{3}, where each of the centers of the corresponding circles is among the vertices of a regular hexagon of side 2.2. What is the area enclosed by the curve?
  15. A 3×33 \times 3 square is partitioned into 99 unit squares. Each unit square is painted either white or black with each color being equally likely, chosen independently and at random. The square is then rotated 90∘90^\circ clockwise about its center, and every white square in a position formerly occupied by a black square is painted black. The colors of all other squares are left unchanged. What is the probability that the grid is now entirely black?
  16. Circle C1C_1 has its center OO lying on circle C2.C_2. The two circles meet at XX and Y.Y. Point ZZ in the exterior of C1C_1 lies on circle C2C_2 and XZ=13,XZ = 13, OZ=11,OZ = 11, and YZ=7.YZ = 7. What is the radius of circle C1?C_1?
  17. Let SS be a subset of {1,2,3,…,30}\{1, 2, 3, \ldots, 30\} with the property that no pair of distinct elements in SS has a sum divisible by 5.5. What is the largest possible size of S?S?
  18. Triangle ABCABC has AB=27,AB = 27, AC=26,AC = 26, and BC=25.BC = 25. Let II denote the intersection of the internal angle bisectors of △ABC.\triangle ABC. What is BI?BI?
  19. Adam, Benin, Chiang, Deshawn, Esther, and Fiona have internet accounts. Some, but not all, of them are internet friends with each other, and none of them has an internet friend outside this group. Each of them has the same number of internet friends. In how many different ways can this happen?
  20. Consider the polynomial P(x)=∏k=010(x2k+2k)=(x+1)(x2+2)(x4+4)⋯(x1024+1024). \begin{aligned} P(x) &= \prod_{k=0}^{10}\left(x^{2^k} + 2^k\right) \\ &= (x+1)(x^2+2)(x^4+4) \\ &\quad \cdots (x^{1024}+1024). \end{aligned} The coefficient of x2012x^{2012} is equal to 2a.2^a. What is a?a?
  21. Let a,a, b,b, and cc be positive integers with a≥b≥ca \ge b \ge c such that a2−b2−c2+ab=2011a^2 - b^2 - c^2 + ab = 2011 and a2+3b2+3c2−3ab−2ac−2bc=−1997. \begin{aligned} &a^2 + 3b^2 + 3c^2 \\ &\quad {}- 3ab - 2ac - 2bc = -1997. \end{aligned} What is a?a?
  22. Distinct planes p1,p_1, p2,p_2, …,\ldots, pkp_k intersect the interior of a cube Q.Q. Let SS be the union of the faces of QQ and let P=⋃j=1kpj.P = \bigcup_{j=1}^{k} p_j. The intersection of PP and SS consists of the union of all segments joining the midpoints of every pair of edges belonging to the same face of Q.Q. What is the difference between the maximum and the minimum possible values of k?k?
  23. Let SS be the square one of whose diagonals has endpoints (0.1,0.7)(0.1, 0.7) and (−0.1,−0.7).(-0.1, -0.7). A point v=(x,y)v = (x, y) is chosen uniformly at random over all pairs of real numbers xx and yy such that 0≤x≤20120 \le x \le 2012 and 0≤y≤2012.0 \le y \le 2012. Let T(v)T(v) be a translated copy of SS centered at v.v. What is the probability that the square region determined by T(v)T(v) contains exactly two points with integer coordinates in its interior?
  24. Let {ak}k=12011\{a_k\}_{k=1}^{2011} be the sequence of real numbers defined by a1=0.201,a_1 = 0.201, a2=(0.2011)a1,a_2 = (0.2011)^{a_1}, a3=(0.20101)a2,a_3 = (0.20101)^{a_2}, and a4=(0.201011)a3,a_4 = (0.201011)^{a_3}, and more generally ak={(0.20101…0101⏟k+2 digits)ak−1,if k is odd,(0.20101…01011⏟k+2 digits)ak−1,if k is even. a_k = \begin{cases} \tiny \left(0.\underbrace{20101\ldots0101}_{k+2 \text{ digits}}\right)^{a_{k-1}}, & \tiny \text{if } k \text{ is odd,} \\ \tiny \left(0.\underbrace{20101\ldots01011}_{k+2 \text{ digits}}\right)^{a_{k-1}}, & \tiny \text{if } k \text{ is even.} \end{cases} Rearranging the numbers in the sequence {ak}k=12011\{a_k\}_{k=1}^{2011} in decreasing order produces a new sequence {bk}k=12011.\{b_k\}_{k=1}^{2011}. What is the sum of all the integers k,k, 1≤k≤2011,1 \le k \le 2011, such that ak=bk?a_k = b_k?
  25. Let f(x)=∣2{x}−1∣f(x) = |2\{x\} - 1| where {x}\{x\} denotes the fractional part of x.x. The number nn is the smallest positive integer such that the equation nf(xf(x))=xnf(xf(x)) = x has at least 20122012 real solutions x.x. What is n?n? Note: the fractional part of xx is a real number y={x},y = \{x\}, such that 0≤y<10 \le y \lt 1 and x−yx - y is an integer.

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 12 archive.