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Problem 10 (2018 AIME I)

AIME 2018
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Understand the scale
Scale 0.5: Easiest math competition problems, often solvable even for early middle school students without experience. 1: Problems strictly for beginners, often at a moderate middle school level. 1.5: Problems for stronger beginner students, on the level of the middling problems in most middle school contests. 2: For motivated beginners, harder questions from the previous categories. 2.5: More advanced beginner problems, hardest questions from previous categories. 3: Early intermediate problems that require more creative thinking. 3.5: Tougher early intermediate problems that consistently stretch into higher-level creative thinking or conceptual knowledge. 4: Intermediate-level problems. 4.5: Upper intermediate problems approaching the upper bound for non-invitational sprint math competitions. 5: More difficult AIME problems or simple proof-based Olympiad-style problems. 6: High-level AIME-styled questions or introductory Olympiad-level questions. 7: Tougher Olympiad-level questions, may require more technical knowledge. 8: High-level Olympiad-level questions. 9: Expert Olympiad-level questions. 9.5: The hardest problems appearing on Olympiads which the strongest students could reasonably solve. 10: Historically notorious problems, generally unsuitable for even very hard competitions because they are exceedingly tedious, long, and difficult.

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Problem

The wheel shown below consists of two circles and five spokes, with a label at each point where a spoke meets a circle. A bug walks along the wheel, starting at point AA . At every step of the process, the bug walks from one labeled point to an adjacent labeled point. Along the inner circle the bug only walks in a counterclockwise direction, and along the outer circle the bug only walks in a clockwise direction. For example, the bug could travel along the path AJABCHCHIJAAJABCHCHIJA , which has 1010 steps. Let nn be the number of paths with 1515 steps that begin and end at point AA . Find the remainder when nn is divided by 1000.1000. $

figure

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