1991 AJHSME Problems/Problem 14

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Problem

Several students are competing in a series of three races. A student earns $5$ points for winning a race, $3$ points for finishing second and $1$ point for finishing third. There are no ties. What is the smallest number of points that a student must earn in the three races to be guaranteed of earning more points than any other student?

$\text{(A)}\ 9 \qquad \text{(B)}\ 10 \qquad \text{(C)}\ 11 \qquad \text{(D)}\ 13 \qquad \text{(E)}\ 15$

Solution

There are two ways for a student to get $11$ : $5+5+1$ and $5+3+3$ . Clearly if someone gets one of these combinations someone else could get the other, so we are not guaranteed the most points with $11$ .

There is only one way to get $13$ points: $5+5+3$ . In this case, the largest score another person could get is $5+3+3=11$ , so having $13$ points guarantees having more points than any other person $\rightarrow \boxed{\text{D}}$ .

1991 AJHSME (Problems • Resources)
Preceded by Problem 13	Followed by Problem 15
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1991 AJHSME Problems/Problem 14

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