TxO Math Bowl 2024 - Team Contest - Problem 16


Cities AA, BB, CC, DD, WW, and LL are located in the country of Portaland. A one-way magic portal exists in each of the cities AA, BB, CC, and DD. A portal code shows a portal’s destinations and their corresponding probability. The format of portal codes is Portal MM: (NN, PP, QQ), which represents that by taking the portal in city MM, the probability of travelling to cities NN, PP, QQ are 12\frac{1}{2}, 13\frac{1}{3}, and 16\frac{1}{6}, respectively. The portal codes of the four portals are as follows:

Portal A:A:\; (BB, CC, DD)
Portal B:B:\; (CC, WW, LL)
Portal C:C:\; (DD, WW, LL)
Portal D:D:\; (AA, WW, LL)

If Mike starts in city AA and continually takes portals until he reaches a city without a portal, the probability that he ends up in city WW can be expressed as xy\frac{x}{y}, where xx and yy are relatively prime positive integers. Compute x+yx+y.

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Problem Tags: Counting and probability

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Category: TxO Math Bowl Team Contest
Points: 3
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