Problem

1997 AIME Problem 10

Every card in a deck has a picture of one shape - circle, square, or triangle, which is painted in one of the three colors - red, blue, or green. Furthermore, each color is applied in one of three shades - light, medium, or dark. The deck has 27 cards, with every shape-color-shade combination represented. A set of three cards from the deck is called complementary if all of the following statements are true:

i. Either each of the three cards has a different shape or all three of the card have the same shape.

ii. Either each of the three cards has a different color or all three of the cards have the same color.

iii. Either each of the three cards has a different shade or all three of the cards have the same shade.

How many different complementary three-card sets are there?

Leading zeroes must be inputted, so if your answer is 34, then input 034


Full credit goes to MAA for authoring these problems. These problems were taken on the AOPS website.


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Problem Tags: 2-d Counting and probability Geometry

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