Dart Throw

Michel likes to throw darts at a target like the one shown above. In each game, he throws three darts. His score for the game is the sum of points obtained by each dart. The pink, yellow, and blue regions are worth respectively 5, 3, and 2 points.

Michel scored 134 points after playing n n games. What is the smallest possible value of n n ?


The answer is 10.

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3 solutions

In order to achieve the smallest possible number of games, Michel wants to score as many points as quickly as possible. After 8 perfect 15-point games, Michel will have 120 points (9 perfect games will put him at 135 points, which is too many) and only 14 remaining points.

Is it possible to score 14 points with three darts? No! The best score with three darts is 15 points and the second best score with three darts is 5 + 5 + 3 = 13. Since 14 points cannot be achieved in one game, Michel will need to play two more games \textbf{two more games} to achieve 14 points, which he can do as follows: ( 3 + 2 + 2 ) first game + ( 3 + 2 + 2 ) second game = 14 \underbrace{(3 + 2 + 2)}_{\text{first game}} + \underbrace{(3 + 2 + 2)}_{\text{second game}}= 14 .

Therefore, the fewest number of games possible to reach 134 is 8 + 2 = 10. 8 + 2 = 10.

Tootie Frootie
Sep 4, 2015

The fewest number of games possible to reach 134 is 8+2 = 10; n = 10

Danilo Leite
Sep 3, 2015

With 9 games scoring maximum points (15), he gets to 135. As there is no region that awards 4 points, so he can't lose only one point in any one of those games to get a 134 score. The least he can lose per game is 2 points. With 10 games, he needs to lose 16 points in order to score 134 instead of 150. 16 is divisible by 2 so he can score 134 by playing 10 games. He can do this by losing total 16 points in various possible combination such as scoring 5+5+3 in 8 of those games. Or scoring 3+2+2 in two of those games. Or he could score 2+3+0 in one game then 3+3+3 in another. Or (5+5+3)+(5+3+0)+(5+3+0). Etcetera.

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