Problem

Source:

Tags: combinatorics



A large number of rocks are placed on a table. On each turn, one may remove some rocks from the table following these rules: on the first turn, only one rock may be removed, and on every subsequent turn, one may remove either twice as many rocks or the same number of rocks as they have discarded on the previous turn. Determine the minimum number of turns required to remove exactly $2012$ rocks from the table.