Problem #1822

1822.

Walking down Jane Street, Ralph passed four houses in a row, each painted a different color. He passed the orange house before the red house, and he passed the blue house before the yellow house. The blue house was not next to the yellow house. How many orderings of the colored houses are possible? This problem is copyrighted by the American Mathematics Competitions.

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Instructions for entering answers:

• Reduce fractions to lowest terms and enter in the form 7/9.
• Numbers involving pi should be written as 7pi or 7pi/3 as appropriate.
• Square roots should be written as sqrt(3), 5sqrt(5), sqrt(3)/2, or 7sqrt(2)/3 as appropriate.
• Exponents should be entered in the form 10^10.
• If the problem is multiple choice, enter the appropriate (capital) letter.
• Enter points with parentheses, like so: (4,5)
• Complex numbers should be entered in rectangular form unless otherwise specified, like so: 3+4i. If there is no real component, enter only the imaginary component (i.e. 2i, NOT 0+2i).

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