Tuesday 24 March 2015

Senior
Years 11 & 12(Australian school years)

Name:

INSTRUCTIONS
• Do not open the CAT 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 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 CAT and to identify outstanding students, the AMT reserves
the right to re-examine students before deciding whether to grant official status to their score.
© 2015 AMT Publishing amtt limited acn 083 950 341
Computational and Algorithmic Thinking 2015 (Senior) 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. Disco Lights
A DJ has a circle of lights that flash either blue or white. Each light is thus between
exactly two other lights. He wants to write a program to give a dashing sequence,
changing every second, and tries the following rule:

At each change, a light turns (or remains) blue if it is between a white and a blue
light, and turns (or remains) white if it is between two white or two blue lights.

Disappointingly, when he runs the program, the lights all quickly turn to white and stay
white, no matter what his starting position. If his starting pattern is

B W

B W

W B

how many seconds will it take until all lights are white?

(A) 2 (B) 3 (C) 4 (D) 5 (E) 6

Computational and Algorithmic Thinking 2015 (Senior) 2

2. Card Cutting
Anna, Brett, Chris, David and Emma are playing a card game with a pack of 15 cards,
each of which has one of the letters A, B, . . . , O.
The cards are in order
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O
with A on top.
Anna takes some cards from the top. Then Brett takes some cards from the top of the
remaining cards. Then Chris and David do likewise. Finally Emma takes the rest.
Without changing the order of their cards, each one puts their cards back to form a new
deck, giving
H I M N O A B C J K L D E F G
with H on top.
When did David return his cards?

(A) first (B) second (C) third (D) fourth (E) fifth

3. Hop, Skip and Jump

In the Hop, Skip and Jump event Fred’s total distance was 15 m. It was noted that each
of his hop, skip and jump distances was a whole number of metres. Finally his jump
was longer than his skip, and his skip was longer than his hop. How many possible
combinations of distance are there that could achieve this result?

(A) 5 (B) 9 (C) 10 (D) 11 (E) 12

4. Maximum Sum
A subsequence is a set of one or more adjacent elements from a list. For example, 1 5 3
is a subsequence of 4 1 5 3 6 8. The subsequence 1 5 3 has a sum of 9.
What is the maximum sum of any subsequence from the following list?
-6 1 6 0 -3 -3 5 7 -9 3 -9 4 7 -5 1 6 -2 1 -5 7

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

Computational and Algorithmic Thinking 2015 (Senior) 3

5. Tollroads
You want to drive from A to B. There are tolls on the horizontal roads, but the vertical
ones have no toll. The numbers on the vertical roads show the number of roundabouts
on these roads. There are no roundabouts on the horizontal roads.

$2 $4 $4 $1 $3 $3 $1
A B

3 2 1 4 1 2 3 2

$2 $2 $3 $2 $3 $2 $1

1 4 2 1 2 1 2 1

$3 $3 $3 $1 $4 $3 $2

What is the fewest number of roundabouts you must go through if you want to pay as
little as possible in tolls?

(A) 7 (B) 8 (C) 9 (D) 10 (E) 11

6. Bucket Game
Alice and Bob are playing a game. There are 7 white counters and 5 black counters in
a bucket. Alice and Bob take it in turns to remove counters. Each turn, a player may
remove between 1 and 3 white counters from the bucket or, alternatively, remove 1 or 2
black counters. The player who takes the last counter(s) out of the bucket wins.
Alice moves first. How many counters should she take to guarantee that she can win?

(A) 1 white (B) 2 white (C) 3 white (D) 1 black (E) 2 black
Computational and Algorithmic Thinking 2015 (Senior) 4

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. Routes
Judith’s daily run takes her through a garden. There are several paths through the garden,
going from top left to bottom right. She always runs the shortest distance, but likes
variety.
For each of the gardens below, how many different routes could Judith take?

7.

8.

9.
Computational and Algorithmic Thinking 2015 (Senior) 5

10–12. Elfstones
You have discovered the hiding place of the fabled elfstones. They are buried in equally
spaced caches, with several elfstones in each cache.
You are at the leftmost cache and want to get as many elfstones as possible. However,
the built-in defence means that if you take a cache of n elfstones, the next safe cache to
the right will be n caches away.
For instance, if the caches were 2 1 2 4, and you took the leftmost 2, you could also
take the other 2 or the 4, but not the 1 next to it. (In this case you would take the
leftmost 2 and the 4 for the best result.)
For each set of elfstone caches below, what is the largest number of elfstones that you
could safely take?

10. 2 3 6 5 3 5 1 4

11. 1 2 8 7 3 5 1 1 1 4

12. 2 5 2 3 8 2 7 3 1 1 2 7 3 1
 Computational and Algorithmic Thinking 2015 (Senior) 6

13–15. Hex Game

Anna and Brett are playing a game on a board with numbers in hexagonal cells. The
players take turns, moving the token one place up, down, right-up or right-down, but the
token cannot be placed onto any cell twice. The game finishes when the token is placed
on the rightmost (shaded) cell.
When Anna places the token onto a cell, her score is increased by that number of points.
When Brett places the token onto a cell, Anna’s score is decreased by that number of
points. Anna wants her final score to be as large as possible, whilst Brett wants Anna’s
score to be as small as possible.
Anna goes first and places the token on the leftmost (shaded) cell. For each of the boards
below, what is Anna’s final score if both she and Brett play as well as possible?

13.

3 5
4 5 3
3 7

14.

2 3 3 5
5 3 4 5 3
5 6 3 7

15.

1 4 3 5
5 1 4 5 3
1 6 3 7

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