olymmath

BALTIC-WAY 2021 Problem 8

    We are given a collection of 22k2^{2^{k}} coins, where kk is a non-negative integer. Exactly one coin is fake. We have an unlimited number of service dogs. One dog is sick but we do not know which one. A test consists of three steps: select some coins from the collection of all coins; choose a service dog; the dog smells all of the selected coins at once. A healthy dog will bark if and only if the fake coin is amongst them. Whether the sick dog will bark or not is random.

    Devise a strategy to find the fake coin, using at most 2k+k+22^{k}+k+2 tests, and prove that it works.

    Dataset text NuminaMath olympiads. Quoted with source.

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