A set of 8 problems was prepared for an examination. Each student was given 3 of them. No two students received more than one common problem. What is the largest possible number of students?
Answer: 8 .

Denote the problems by $A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H$, then 8 possible problem sets are $A B C, A D E, A F G, B D G, B F H, C D H, C E F, E G H$. Hence, there could be 8 students.

Suppose that some problem (e.g., $A$ ) was given to 4 students. Then each of these 4 students should receive 2 different "supplementary" problems, and there should be at least 9 problems - a contradiction. Therefore each problem was given to at most 3 students, and there were at most $8 \cdot 3=24$ "awardings" of problems. As each student was "awarded" 3 problems, there were at most 8 students.