The Mathsbombe Competition

2024 edition. From the people behind the Alan Turing Cryptography Competition.
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Problem 7

$12$ children are playing with $6$ skipping ropes. Each child grabs one end of a rope, and then they all line up forming two parallel lines, in such a way that no two children holding two ends of the same rope are in the same line. The children then pull the skipping ropes taut, and count how many pairs of ropes there are crossing each other. If the children arranged themselves randomly, what is the probability that the number of crossing pairs of ropes is exactly $9$? Give your answer rounded to $3$ decimal places.

Mathsbombe Competition 2024 is organised by the The Department of Mathematics at The University of Manchester.
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