2021 AMC 10A Problems

Problem 1

What is the value of

Problem 2

Portia's high school has times as many students as Lara's high school. The two high schools
have a total of students. How many students does Portia's high school have?

Problem 3

The sum of two natural numbers is . One of the two numbers is divisible by 10. If the
units digit of that number is erased, the other number is obtained. What is the difference of these
two numbers?

Problem 4

A cart rolls down a hill, traveling inches the first second and accelerating so that during each
successive -second time interval, it travels inches more than during the previous -second
interval. The cart takes seconds to reach the bottom of the hill. How far, in inches, does it
travel?

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Problem 5

The quiz scores of a class with students have a mean of . The mean of a collection
of of these quiz scores is . What is the mean of the remaining quiz scores in terms of

Problem 6

Chantal and Jean start hiking from a trailhead toward a fire tower. Jean is wearing a heavy
backpack and walks slower. Chantal starts walking at miles per hour. Halfway to the tower, the
trail becomes really steep, and Chantal slows down to miles per hour. After reaching the tower,
she immediately turns around and descends the steep part of the trail at miles per hour. She
meets Jean at the halfway point. What was Jean's average speed, in miles per hour, until they
meet?

Problem 7

Tom has a collection of snakes, of which are purple and of which are happy. He observes
that

 all of his happy snakes can add,

 none of his purple snakes can subtract, and
 all of his snakes that can't subtract also can't add.

Which of these conclusions can be drawn about Tom's snakes?

Purple snakes can add.

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 Purple snakes are happy.

Snakes that can add are purple.

Happy snakes are not purple.

Happy snakes can't subtract.

Problem 8

When a student multiplied the number by the repeating decimal,

where and are digits, he did not notice the notation and just
multiplied times . Later he found that his answer is less than the correct answer.
What is the -digit integer

Problem 9

What is the least possible value of for real numbers and

Problem 10

Which of the following is equivalent to

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Problem 11

For which of the following integers is the base- number not divisible by

Problem 12

Two right circular cones with vertices facing down as shown in the figure below contain the
same amount of liquid. The radii of the tops of the liquid surfaces are and . Into each
cone is dropped a spherical marble of radius , which sinks to the bottom and is completely
submerged without spilling any liquid. What is the ratio of the rise of the liquid level in the
narrow cone to the rise of the liquid level in the wide cone?

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Problem 13

What is the volume of tetrahedron with edge

lengths , , , , , and

Problem 14

All the roots of polynomial are positive

integers, possibly repeated. What is the value of

Problem 15

Values for , , , and are to be selected from without replacement (i.e.,

no two letters have the same value). How many ways are there to make such choices so that the
two curves and intersect? (The order in which the curves are
listed does not matter; for example, the choices , , , is considered
the same as the choices , , , .)

Problem 16

In the following list of numbers, the integer 𝒏 appears 𝒏 times in the list for 𝟏 ≤ 𝒏 ≤ 𝟐𝟎𝟎.

𝟏, 𝟐, 𝟐, 𝟑, 𝟑, 𝟑, 𝟒, 𝟒, 𝟒, 𝟒, ⋯ , 𝟐𝟎𝟎, 𝟐𝟎𝟎, ⋯ , 𝟐𝟎𝟎.

What is the median of the numbers in this list?

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Problem 17

Trapezoid has , , and . Let be the

intersection of the diagonals and , and let be the midpoint of . Given
that , the length can be written in the form , where and are positive
integers and is not divisible by the square of any prime. What is

Problem 18

Let be a function defined on the set of positive rational numbers with the property
that for all positive rational numbers and . Suppose that also
has the property that for every prime number . For which of the following
numbers is

Problem 19

The area of the region bounded by the graph of

is , where and are integers. What is

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Problem 20

In how many ways can the sequence , , , , be rearranged so that no three consecutive
terms are increasing and no three consecutive terms are decreasing?

Problem 21

Let be an equiangular hexagon. The lines , , and determine a

triangle with area , and the lines , , and determine a triangle with
area . The perimeter of hexagon can be expressed
as , where , , and are positive integers and is not divisible by the square of
any prime. What is

Problem 22

Hiram's algebra notes are pages long and are printed on sheets of paper; the first sheet
contains pages and , the second sheet contains pages and , and so on. One day he leaves
his notes on the table before leaving for lunch, and his roommate decides to borrow some pages
from the middle of the notes. When Hiram comes back, he discovers that his roommate has taken
a consecutive set of sheets from the notes and that the average (mean) of the page numbers on all
remaining sheets is exactly . How many sheets were borrowed?

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Problem 23

Frieda the frog begins a sequence of hops on a grid of squares, moving one square on
each hop and choosing at random the direction of each hop -- up, down, left, or right. She does
not hop diagonally. When the direction of a hop would take Frieda off the grid, she "wraps
around'' and jumps to the opposite edge. For example if Frieda begins in the center square and
makes two hops "up'', the first hop would place her in the top row middle square, and the second
hop would cause Frieda to jump to the opposite edge, landing in the bottom row middle square.
Suppose Frieda starts from the center square, makes at most four hops at random, and stops
hopping if she lands on a corner square. What is the probability that she reaches a corner square
on one of the four hops?

Problem 24

The interior of a quadrilateral is bounded by the graphs

of and , where is a positive real number. What is the
area of this region in terms of , valid for all

Problem 25

How many ways are there to place indistinguishable red chips, indistinguishable blue chips,
and indistinguishable green chips in the squares of a grid so that no two chips of the
same color are directly adjacent to each other, either vertically or horizontally?

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These problems are copyright Mathematical Association of America.

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Answer Key
1. D
2. C
3. D
4. D
5. B
6. A
7. D
8. E
9. D
10. C
11. E
12. E
13. C
14. A
15. C
16. C
17. D
18. E
19. E
20. D
21. C
22. B
23. D
24. D
25. E

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