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Japan Junior Mathematical Olympiad

Japan algebra

Problem

Two people, and , go up a staircase with a certain number of steps. goes up 2 steps in one stride, while goes up 5 steps in one stride, except if finds only 1 step before the last stride, then he will go up just 1 step to finish, and if finds 4 or less steps remaining before the last stride, then will go up whatever steps remaining to climb to finish. took 6 strides less than to finish climbing this staircase. Determine all possible numbers of steps for this staircase can have.
Solution


Let be the number of steps in the staircase, and be the number of strides and have taken, respectively. Then, we have From these we obtain , which yields .

Thus the possibilities for are 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, but since corresponding values of are as in the table below, we conclude that the answers we desire are .
17181920212223
991010111112
4444555
5566667
Final answer
19, 20, 21, 22

Techniques

Floors and ceilingsLinear and quadratic inequalities