2020 AMC 8 Problems/Problem 21
Problem 21
A game board consists of 
squares that alternate in color between black and white. The figure below shows square 
in the bottom row and square 
in the top row. A marker is placed at 
A step consists of moving the marker onto one of the adjoining white squares in the row above. How many 
-step paths are there from to 
(The figure shows a sample path.)
[asy] // diagram by SirCalcsALot size(200); int[] x = {6, 5, 4, 5, 6, 5, 6}; int[] y = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7}; int N = 7; for (int i = 0; i < 8; ++i) { for (int j = 0; j < 8; ++j) { draw((i,j)--(i+1,j)--(i+1,j+1)--(i,j+1)--(i,j)); if ((i+j) % 2 == 0) { filldraw((i,j)--(i+1,j)--(i+1,j+1)--(i,j+1)--(i,j)--cycle,black); } } } for (int i = 0; i < N; ++i) { draw(circle((x[i],y[i])+(0.5,0.5),0.35)); } label("", (5.5, 0.5)); label("", (6.5, 7.5)); [/asy]
