100 Favorite Calendar Problems

1. In a twelve-team bowling league, if every team plays every other team four times during the
season, how many games must be scheduled?
2. How many lines of symmetry does a regular polygon of n sides have?
3. The graph describes a six-hour trip that Ramon recently took.
What was his average speed?
4. If A, B, and C are distinct digits, can the three-digit numbers ABC
and CBA both be divisible by 7?

5. A collection of cubes of side length 1 inch are glued together in

the shape of a rectangular prism, as shown. Imagine that you can
pick up the prism and view the exposed faces. If 500 cubes are
used, what is the least possible number of exposed cube faces?
6. A train, traveling at constant speed, takes 20 seconds from the time it first enters a tunnel
that is 300 meters long until it completely emerges from the tunnel. One of the stationary
ceiling lights in the tunnel is directly above the train for 10 seconds. Find the length of the train.
7. Three dice are tossed. What is the probability that the numbers shown will all be different?
8. The figure is composed of twenty-five unit square. What is the area of
the unshaded region?
9. cos 2 1 + cos 2 2 + cos 2 3 + cos 2 4 + ... + cos 2 90 = ?

10. A portion of a number line is divided into four equal parts, as

shown. What is the value of p, to the nearest ten-thousandth?
11. A dartboard has two regions for earning points: 5 points and 7
points. What is the largest score impossible to earn?
12. If x, y, and z are three different numbers for which the ordered triples x, y, z and x3, y3, z3
are in arithmetic progression, find y.
13. The sides of a triangle are 15, 20, 25. Find the length of the shortest
altitude.
14. Mary typed a six-digit number, but the two 1s she typed did not show.
What appeared instead was 2002. How many different six-digit numbers
could she have typed?
15. If the chances of rain are 40% and 20% for the two days of a weekend, what is the chance
that it will rain on at least one day if the two events are independent?

16. Let C be a cube where the length in inches of its long diagonal is the same as its volume in
cubic inches. What is the length in inches of each side?
17. In the 1973 Belmont Stakes, Secretariat covered 12 furlongs in 2 minutes, 24 seconds.
What speed is that in miles per hour?
18. When their favorite pizza parlor closed, a family tried a new restaurant that offers only
hexagonal pizzas. The hexagonal pizzas are sold according to their widest diameters. An 18inch circular pizza from their old pizza parlor used to suffice. To the nearest inch, what size
pizza must they buy to have the same amount of pizza?
19. What is the smallest positive integer that cannot occur as the difference between two
positive prime numbers?
20. A strip of uniform width is cut from three sides of a square region,
leaving a rectangular region with area that is one-half that of the square
region. Determine the quotient of the square length divided by the strips
width.

21. Pick a point P on the inside of a unit square. Connect P with the
vertices of the base of the square. What is the probability that the triangle
so completed will be an acute triangle?
22. Spots doghouse has a regular hexagonal base that measures one
yard on each side. Spot is tethered to a vertex with a two-yard rope. What
is the area, in square yards, of the region outside the doghouse that Spot
can reach?
23. Each of the small circles in the figure has radius 1. The innermost circle
is tangent to the six circles that surround it, and each of those circles is
tangent to the large circle and to its small-circle neighbors. Find the area of
the shaded region.
24. Fifteen pool balls are numbered 1 through 15. Arrange them in a regular
triangular form (as though they were racked) so that the three balls in the
middle sum to 39 and the five balls on each side of the triangle sum to 39.
25. If the perimeter of an isosceles triangle is 36 cm and if the altitude to its base is 12 cm,
what is the triangles area?
26. Express the number 96 as the difference of two squares in four different ways.
27. Two hundred stones are placed on the ground 3 feet apart, the first being 3 feet from a
basket. If the basket and all the stones are in a straight line, how far does a person travel who
starts from the basket and brings the stones to it one by one?
28. What is the least value of y that satisfies the following inequality? 4 + x + 5 + y 100

29. In your basement are three light switches, each controlling a different lamp upstairs. They
are all in the off position, but you do not know which switch controls each lamp. You may turn
on any of the switches as often as you like but may make only one trip upstairs. How can you
determine which switch controls each lamp?
30. According to NCAA data, 52 percent of all student-athletes graduate: 55 percent of female
student-athletes and 48 percent of male student-athletes graduate. What is the ratio of the
number of male student-athletes to the number of female student-athletes?
31. The two squares in the diagram have side length 1. Find the area of
the slanted rectangle.

32. A circles diameter is divided in the ratio of 3 to 4, and semicircles are

drawn on each segment, as shown. What is the ratio of the upper area to the
lower area?
33. Dot is taller than Dab but shorter than Dee, and Dave is taller than Don.
Give the last letter in the name of the tallest person.
34. Twenty-four persons are gathered for a conference. Everyone shakes
hands with everyone else. If the conference begins at 9:00 a.m., each handshake takes thirty
seconds, and twelve pairs of people are shaking hands simultaneously during each thirtysecond period, at what time is the handshaking completed?
35. You have a large number of twelve-hour clocks in your office. Each clock consistently
gains or loses a different whole number of seconds per hour. At noon today all the clocks are
correct. When, if ever, will all the clocks be correct again?
36. If 2 f ( x ) + f (1 x ) = x 2 for all x, then f ( x ) = ?
37. A 3x3x3 cube is formed by gluing together 27 standard cubical dice. (On a standard die,
the sum of the numbers of any pair of opposite faces is 7.) Find the smallest possible sum of
all the numbers showing on the surface of the 3x3x3 cube.
1

38. Evaluate 3 +
4+

1
3+

, where the three dots indicate the pattern continues without end.

1
4 +...

39. A certain type of decorative tissue paper is sold in rolls of radius 5 cm with a cardboard
core of radius 1 cm. If the paper is used until the thickness of the paper layer is reduced to half
its original thickness, what fraction of the original amount of tissue paper is still on the roll?
40. A construction engineer correctly computes the maximum safe load of a bridge to be
1000 99 70 2 tons. He approximates 2 as 1.4. The bridge is built, and on the day it is

opened to traffic, it collapses under a load less than a tenth of the weight the engineer thought
it could bear. Can you explain the engineers mistake?
41. Three tennis balls are tightly packed in a can. What fraction of the volume of
the can is occupied by the tennis balls?
42. A man with $10,000 invests $4,000 at 5 percent and $3,500 at 4 percent
simple interest. To have a yearly income of $500 from the investment, at what rate
must he invest the remainder of the money?
43. Three cubes, with edges 2,6, and 8 cm long, are glued together at their faces.
Compute the minimum surface area possible for the resulting figure.
44. A square of perimeter 20 is inscribed in a square of perimeter 28. What is the
greatest distance between a vertex of the inner square and a vertex of the outer
square?
45. Fannie Mae, an eccentric millionaire, visited Washington High School. She gave seniors
$10 each; however, 40 percent of the seniors were away. She gave all the juniors $6 each. If
the total enrollment of juniors and seniors is 2240, how much money did Fannie Mae give
away?
46. Two days ago I was 28, but next year Ill be 31. When is my birthday?
47. If the price is the same, which is the better buy a 10-inch round pizza or a 9-inch square
pizza?
48. Let p be a prime number greater than 3. What is the remainder when p2 is divided by 12?
Why?
49. A triangle is bordered by three squares. If the areas of the
squares are 225, 196, and 169, what is the area of the triangle?
50. How many sets of two or more consecutive positive integers can
be added to obtain a sum of 100?
51. How many times does the paper wind around the cardboard roller
on a 300-sheet roll of bathroom tissue? Each sheet is 4.4 inches
long, the diameter of the full roll is approximately 4.2 inches, and the
diameter of the cardboard roller is approximately 1.6 inches.
52. In what order are the following digits?

0,2,3,6,7,1,9,4,5,8

53. Chelsea made six of seventeen free-throw attempts. How many consecutive free throws
must she make to raise her percentage of free throws made to
exactly 50 percent?
99
54. How many digits does the number ( 9 )( ) have when written in

base nine?
55. Find the average (mean) test score to the nearest integer.

56. Six regions can be formed when two tangents are drawn to a circle.
Investigate the maximum number of regions that can be formed if 3,4,5,,n
tangents are drawn.
57. What number comes next in the pattern, and why?

2,3,6,15,42,__

58. The given trapezoid was formed by truncating an isosceles triangle.

The area of the original triangle was 60 square units. The area of the
trapezoid is 45 square units. Find the area of ABC.
USA
59. Determine what single digit each letter represents. +USSR
PEACE

60. The home plate used in baseball can be produced by filling in two of
the corners of a 1-by-1 square as shown. What is the area of home plate?
61. If you multiply the four-digit number abcd by 4, the digits gets
reversed. That is abcd 4 = dcba . Find abcd .
62. Find a Pythagorean triple where each integer is odd.
63. A bag contains one marble known to be red or green. A green marble is
put in the bag, and the bag is shaken well. A marble is drawn randomly, and
it is green. This marble is returned, the bag shaken, and a second draw
made also green. What is the probability that the marble still in the bag is
also green?
64. What is the radius of the inscribed circle in a 3-4-5 triangle?
65. A queen is just below a queen. A jack is just above a queen. A
spade is just above a spade. A heart is just below a spade. Name
the three cards arranged as shown.
66. Given a right triangle ABC with m < C = 90D , AC = 20 , and the
other sides having integral lengths. How many such triangles
exist?
67. Durign the first four days of Arthurs new job, he had to wake
up at 5:30, 5:30, 7:10, and 7:30. On average, at what time did he
have to wake up each morning?
68. What is the largest number of 0s that can occur at the end of 1n + 2n + 3n + 4n for any
positive integer n?
69. For what value of m will the triangle be formed by the lines y = 4, y = mx + 7, and y =, x + 7
be equilateral?
70. What symbol comes next?

71. Two concentric circles are such that a chord of the larger (thirty-six inches long) is trisected
by the smaller. The sum of the radii of the two circles is also thirty-six inches. Find the length in
inches of the larger circles radius.
72. A parallelogram has consecutive side lengths of 9 and 7 and diagonals of integral lengths.
How long are these diagonals?
73. If the repeating decimal 0.842151 is represented by the fraction a/b, where a and b are
relatively prime positive integers, find a + b .
74. If the ratio of the lengths of the edges of a right-rectangular prism is 1:2:3, and the total
surface area is 550 square units, find its volume.
75. For the nonzero numbers a, b, and c, define ( a, b, c ) =

a b c
+ + . Find ( 2,12,9 ) .
b c a

76. What is the length of segment AG?

77. How many addition signs need to be palced between the digits of the
number 987,654,321 to get a total of 99, and where should they be
placed?
78. The number 27 34 5 7 2 113 is divisible by many perfect squares. How
many?
79. A square is inscribed in a circle and is circumscribed about a smaller,
concentric circle. What is the ratio of the area of the inner circle to the annulus?
80. Two dice are rolled and the product of the two numbers that appear is
calculated. What is the expected value of a roll?
81. An artist has 14 cubes, each with an edge of 1 m. She forms a
sculpture on the ground and paints the exposed surface. How many m2
does she paint?
A) 21
B) 24
C) 33
D) 37
E) 42
82. With a seven-minute sand timer and an eleven-minute sand timer,
what is the easiest way to time the boiling of an egg for fifteen minutes?
83. If the retail price for a book is 25 percent more than its cost to the
seller, what percent of the final price is profit?
84. Semicircles are erected on the legs and on the base of a right
isosceles triangle as shown. Express the sum of the areas of the shaded
lunes as a function of s.
85. For all real numbers, x, f ( 2 x ) = x 2 x + 3 . Express f ( x ) in terms of x.
86. You have ten boxes and forty-four marbles. Can you put your marbles in the boxes so that
each box contains a different number of marbles?

87. Which as the greater area: the darker shaded region or the lighter
shaded region?
88. The last four digits of my telephone number add to six, but none of
the digits is zero. What is the probability that your one guess is correct?
89. At a store, you are given a 20 percent discount and you pay 7
percent sales tax. Does it matter which is calculated first?
90. A square is inscribed in a semicircle as shown. Find the ratio of s
to a.
91. A pretzel stick 2.5 units long is broken into two pieces at a point
located randomly along its length. The lengths of the broken pieces
are measured, rounded to the nearest integer, and then added. What is the probability that the
sum is 3?
92. The will of an eccentric millionaire reads as follows: I leave
of the remainder to my wife,

2
3

4
17

of my estate to my son,

7
13

of this remainder to my daughter, and the remaining $2 million

to my dog. What was the total amount of the estate?

93. The number of diagonals of a regular polygon is subtracted from the number of sides of the
polygon, and the result is zero. What is the number of sides of this polygon?
94. On the planet Urp, most years have 180 days (18 months of 10 days each). Once every 7
years, however, an Urp year contains 181 days (the third month contains 11 days). Each Urp
week is 5 days long. The days of the week, in order of occurrence, are Oneday, Twoday,
Threeday, Fourday, and Fiveday. Duorps was born on a Fourday, on the first day of the fourth
month in a 181-day year. On what day of the week was Duorps 25th birthday?
95. Two circles are drawn internally tangent, as shown. The segments given are
diameters of the larger circle. If y=10 and x=26, calculate the radii of the circles.
96. A customer ordered fifteen Zingers. Zingers are placed in packages of four,
three, or one. In how many different ways can this order be filled?
97. An equilateral triangle is inscribed in one circle an circumscribed about
another. A chord of the larger circle intersects two of the points of tangency of
the triangle and the smaller circle. Fnd the ratio of b to a.
98. A candle is lit at 5:30 p.m. Another candle, 1 cm shorter than the first, is lit
at 7:00 p.m. The candes are the same length at 9:30 p.m. The first candle
burns out at 11:30 p.m. and the second one at 11:00 p.m. How tall was the longer candle?
99. Four points are chosen in a circle of radius 1 unit. Show that at least two of the points are
within 3 of one another.
100. A bag contains one marble known to be red or green. A green marble is put in the bag,
and the bag is shaken well. A marble is drawn randomly, and it is green. What is the probability
that the remaining marble is also green?