MathDB
Splitting piles

Source: Turkey EGMO TST 2019 #6

July 15, 2020
combinatoricscombinatorics proposed

Problem Statement

There are kk piles and there are 20192019 stones totally. In every move we split a pile into two or remove one pile. Using finite moves we can reach conclusion that there are kk piles left and all of them contain different number of stonws. Find the maximum of kk.