AUSTRALIAN

INFORMATICS
COMPETITION
Thursday 9 May 2013

Junior Paper
Years 7 & 8
Name:

INSTRUCTIONS
• Do not open the competition paper until told to do so.
• Maintain silence at all times.
• Do not bring mobile phones into the room.
• You may use calculators and printed language dictionaries.
• You may NOT borrow equipment without a supervisor’s permission.
• There are 15 questions. Questions 1 – 6 are multiple-choice with five possible answers given.
Questions 7 – 15 require a three-digit answer. Attempt all questions. Penalties do not apply.
• You are allowed working time of one hour (60 minutes). There is no extra reading time.
• This is a competition not a test; do not expect to answer all questions.
• Diagrams are NOT drawn to scale. They are intended only as aids.
• The questions have been thoroughly checked. Each question stands as written. No further
explanation of questions can be provided.
• You must not leave your seat. If you have any other questions or problems, please raise your hand
and wait for a supervisor.
• If you wish to leave the room a supervisor must accompany you.
• Record all your answers on the answer sheet provided.
• Use B or 2B lead pencils only. Ball point and ink pen markings may not activate the optical scanner.
• Do not make any other marks on the answer sheet as these may make the sheet unreadable.
• If you make an error, use a plastic eraser to completely remove all lead marks and smudges.
• Check that the number of the answer you are filling in is the same as the number of the question
you are answering. This is particularly important if you decide to leave a question blank.
• To ensure the integrity of the competition and to identify outstanding students, the AMT reserves
the right to re-examine students before deciding whether to grant official status to their score.

© 2013 AMT Publishing amtt limited acn 083 950 341

Australian Informatics Competition 2013 (Junior) 1

Part A: Questions 1–6

Each question should be answered by a single choice from A to E.
Questions are worth 3 points each.

1. Semi-Sudoku
You are teaching your young niece to play Sudoku. As a first step you tell her to fill in
the following grid so that each row and each column contains the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
and 6.

6 1 2 4 5

 4 5 6

3  6

4 6 3 2 1

2 5 1 3 4

5 4 2 6 1 3

What is the sum of the two cells containing a ?

(A) 5 (B) 6 (C) 7 (D) 8 (E) 9

2. Removing Digits
The latest reality TV show has a mathematical twist. Contestants are given a number
and told to remove pairs of adjacent digits until there is one digit left. At each step the
number remaining must be as large as possible.
For example, if the number was 5 4 1 3 2 they would remove the 1 3 leaving 5 4 2, and
then remove the 4 2 leaving 5.
Which digit would be left if they were given 4 9 2 3 6 8 1 7 5?

(A) 5 (B) 6 (C) 7 (D) 8 (E) 9

Australian Informatics Competition 2013 (Junior) 2

3. Christmas Lights
John has a string of coloured Christmas lights he’d like to hang up. Each light on the
string is either red(R), blue(B) or green(G). However John has a very specific aesthetic
taste for Christmas lights, and would like to remove some of the lights from the string so
that the remaining sequence of lights is comprised of exactly two colours and alternates
between them. For example, in the following initial sequence of lights:
R B G B G R G B R G R B G B G B R G B R B G R
John could remove all but the lights shown in bold below
R B G B G R G B R G R B G B G B R G B R B G R
to get a sequence of 6 alternating blue and red lights.
B R B R B R
What is the longest such row that could be obtained from the initial sequence of lights?

(A) 11 (B) 12 (C) 13 (D) 14 (E) 15

4. The New Truck

A mining community consists of 7 towns that are already connected by an extensive
road system. However a new truck has been ordered that requires some of the existing
roads to be widened. A survey has revealed the cost of widening each section of road
and the results are given on the diagram below. The costs are given in the local currency
of rads. The council is not concerned whether the truck travels by the shortest route. It
only requires that there is a way the truck will be able to travel from any one town to
any other town in the community.

12
14

16
11
13
10

11
13
16 14
15

15

What is the smallest total cost in rads that the council would have to pay?

(A) 70 (B) 71 (C) 72 (D) 73 (E) 74

Australian Informatics Competition 2013 (Junior) 3

5. Governor’s Island
The new Government House is being built on Governor’s Island. Four possible locations
have been identified for jetties on the mainland.
In the map below, the island is black, the rocks are grey and the possible locations for
jetties are marked with an ×. The governor’s boat takes one minute per cell and can
only travel horizontally or vertically, and must not go through a cell where there is a
rock. The time is counted from an × to one of the cells marked G, immediately to the
left of the island. Count the cell marked G but not the cell marked ×. For instance, if
there were no rocks the time taken from the top-left (×) location would be 12 minutes,
and the time taken from the bottom-right (×) location would be 13 minutes.

× G
G

The governor insists that his boat trips must be less than 15 minutes. How many of the
locations are less than 15 minutes from the island?

(A) 0 (B) 1 (C) 2 (D) 3 (E) 4

Australian Informatics Competition 2013 (Junior) 4

6. Golf
Rory and Luke are entering as a team in a golf match. Their match score is calculated as
follows. For each hole they must choose to include either Rory’s score or Luke’s score.
Overall, an equal number of scores must be chosen from each player. For example, if
there are 10 holes in a game, 5 of Rory’s scores and 5 of Luke’s scores must be included.
The aim is to make the combined score as small as possible.
For instance, suppose there were four holes and the scorecard was as follows:
Hole 1 2 3 4
Rory 4 1 4 5
Luke 2 3 4 2
The smallest match score, 9, would be achieved by taking Rory’s score for holes 2 and
3, and Luke’s score for holes 1 and 4.
What is the smallest possible match score for the scorecard below?
Hole 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Rory 5 4 5 3 2 3 3 4
Luke 3 3 4 3 4 2 2 2

(A) 21 (B) 22 (C) 23 (D) 24 (E) 25

Australian Informatics Competition 2013 (Junior) 5

Part B: Questions 7–15

Each question should be answered by a number in the range 0–999.
Questions are worth 2 points each.

7–9. Longest Increasing Subsequence

Cards with the numbers 4 1 2 6 3 5 are placed on a table. A game is played where the
goal is to take as many cards as possible. You may take any card you like to start with,
but the next card you take must be to its right and have a greater number on it. And any
subsequent cards that you take must be to the right of and have a greater number than
the previous card you took. For example, for the cards 4 1 2 6 3 5 it is possible to take
a maximum of four cards, 1 2 3 5.
From the following sets of cards, what is the maximum number of cards that can be
taken in this manner?

7. 4 3 1 2 5 6 4 7 5 8

8. 1 4 7 5 10 6 9 12 16 14 15 14

9. 3 1 4 2 3 4 5 3 6 4 5 7 9 7 10 8 9 11

10–12. Hopping
You are playing a game where you have to hop along a line of squares from left to right.
You can hop to the adjacent square, or hop over it to the next one.
Each square has a number in it. If you hop onto a square from the adjacent square, you
get that number of points. If you hop over a square, you get double the points of the
square you land on, but miss out on the points in the square you hop over.
Consider the squares below.

S 4 2 3

Starting from S to the left of the squares, you could get 9 points by hopping onto all
squares, 7 by hopping over the first square, and 10 by hopping over the second square.
Each list below represents numbers in a row of squares. For each, what is the most
points you could get following the rules above?

10. 4 5 6 7 4 5

11. 2 1 4 5 1 2 5 6 3 2

12. 2 3 5 3 4 6 4 5 8 5 6 9
Australian Informatics Competition 2013 (Junior) 6

13–15. Brown Treecreeper

The brown treecreepers are nesting and you are monitoring their progress. There are
several paths through the bush from the reserve entry to their tree hollow.
In the maps below, the numbers give the times, in minutes, of each leg. For each map,
what is the shortest possible travel time from the entry (E) to the nesting hollow (H)?

13.

3 2

2 2 2 1 1 1
E H

3 2 3

14.

5 3 2 2

2 4 2 1 2 2 1 2
E H

4 2 3

15.

2 1 5

2 1 3 1 4 1 2
E H

3 2 2
 2013 AIC Answers
Question Junior
1 B
2 B
3 D
4 C
5 A
6 C
7 6
8 8
9 10
10 34
11 37
12 70
13 7
14 11
15 8
THE AUSTRALIAN INFORMATICS COMPETITION
BOOK 1 2005-2010

Junior Paper
This book contains the questions, solutions and statistics from the 2005-2010 Australian
Informatics Competition papers. The questions are grouped by category, and the book
includes an explanation of each category and its relevance. Within a category, there may
be several problem types, each of which also has an introduction, including practical
applications and an outline of the method of solution.

Available from the Australian Mathematics Trust website www.amt.edu.au for $42.00 each.

A ustralian M athematics T rust