"Square,Square; Which Color?"

A square tabletop measures 3n × 3n. Each unit square is either red or blue. Each red square that doesn’t lie at the edge of the table has exactly five blue squares among its eight neighbors. Each blue square that doesn’t lie at the edge of the table has exactly four red squares among its eight neighbors. How many squares of each color make up the tabletop?

Here is correct way to count those!

Counting Colorful Squares!

How squares are arranged?

The tabletop measures 3n × 3n, so we can divide it evenly into n² ( 3 × 3) squares that together tile the surface completely.

Let's consider a piece of square of size 3 x 3. For each such unit of 3 x 3 -

1. If the center of the square is red square, then there are 5 blue squares and 3 red squares surrounded with it. 

2. If the center is blue square, then there are 4 blue and 4 red squares surrounding that square. 

In any case, for 3 x 3 = 9 squares, there are 5 blue and 4 red squares. 

Therefore, for tabletop of 3n x 3n, there will be 5n² blue squares and 4n² red squares.  

Challenge of Inverted Playing Cards

One fine day, Mr. Puzzle and Mr. Fry were playing cards, but suddenly power went off and they were getting bored. So Mr. Puzzle randomly inverted position of 15 cards out of 52 cards(and shuffled it) and asked Mr. Fry to divide the card in two pile with equal number of inverted cards (number of cards in each pile need not be equal).

It was very dark in the room and Mr. Fry could not see the cards, after thinking a bit Mr. Fry divided the cards in two piles and quite surprisingly on counting number of inverted cards in both the piles were equal.

What do you think Mr. Fry must have done?


This is what he must have done! 

  

Equating Counts of Inverted Cards in Piles

What was the challenge?

Mr.Fry must have taken top 15 cards & inverted positions of all. So he divides deck into 2 piles - one with 15 cards & other 37 cards.

Now suppose if there are 7 cards that were inverted in top 15 & 8 were inverted in remaining 37. When he flips top 15, 7 remains in normal position & 8 remains in inverted position. That is equal to 8 cards in inverted position from pile of 37 cards.

In short, if there are N cards inverted in top 15 then there are  15 - N cards inverted in remaining 37 cards. So on flipping position of top 15, there will be 15 - N cards in inverted position in top 15. That's how both piles would have equal number of inverted cards i.e. 15-N.  

 

Had Mr.Puzzle inverted positions of 20 cards randomly then Mr. Fry would have flipped top 20 cards. He would have made 2 piles with one with 20 cards & other 32 cards to equate the count of inverted cards in piles.