2024 AIME II Problem 9
Below is the professionally curated solution for Problem 9 of the 2024 AIME II, from LIVE by Po-Shen Loh. You can also try the full timed exam, view all 2024 AIME II solutions, or check the answer key.
All of the real AMC 8, AMC 10, AMC 12, and AIME problems in our complete solution collection are used with official legal permission of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA).
Difficulty rating: 2920
9.
There is a collection of indistinguishable white chips and indistinguishable black chips. Find the number of ways to place some of these chips in a grid such that:
• each cell contains at most one chip
• all chips in the same row and all chips in the same column have the same color, and
• any additional chip placed on the grid would violate one or more of the previous two conditions.
Solution:
In a valid placement, each nonempty row has a single color, and likewise each column. If some row were empty, choose any cell of it: a chip of the color of that cell's column (either color if the column is also empty) could legally be added, contradicting the third condition. So every row and every column is nonempty, and we may speak of its color.
A chip at a cell forces its row and column colors to agree; conversely, if a row and a column share a color but their common cell is empty, a chip of that color could be added. Hence chips occupy exactly the cells whose row color equals the column color. For every row to be nonempty, each row's color must appear among the column colors, and vice versa — the rows and the columns use the same set of colors. Any such coloring conversely yields a valid maximal placement (at most cells hold chips of each color, so the supply suffices), and distinct colorings give distinct placements.
Counting the colorings: all rows and columns white, all black, or both colors used by the rows and by the columns:
Problem 9 in Other Years
1997 AIME · 1998 AIME · 1999 AIME · 2000 AIME I · 2000 AIME II · 2001 AIME I · 2001 AIME II · 2002 AIME I · 2002 AIME II · 2003 AIME I · 2003 AIME II · 2004 AIME I · 2004 AIME II · 2005 AIME I · 2005 AIME II · 2006 AIME I · 2006 AIME II · 2007 AIME I · 2007 AIME II · 2008 AIME I · 2008 AIME II · 2009 AIME I · 2009 AIME II · 2010 AIME I · 2010 AIME II · 2011 AIME I · 2011 AIME II · 2012 AIME I · 2012 AIME II · 2013 AIME I · 2013 AIME II · 2014 AIME I · 2014 AIME II · 2015 AIME I · 2015 AIME II · 2016 AIME I · 2016 AIME II · 2017 AIME I · 2017 AIME II · 2018 AIME I · 2018 AIME II · 2019 AIME I · 2019 AIME II · 2020 AIME I · 2020 AIME II · 2021 AIME I · 2021 AIME II · 2022 AIME I · 2022 AIME II · 2023 AIME I · 2023 AIME II · 2024 AIME I · 2025 AIME I · 2025 AIME II · 2026 AIME I · 2026 AIME II