16. A square with a side length of 9 cm is divided, by lines parallel to its sides, into 81 smaller squares; 40 of these are colored red, and the rest are colored blue. A horizontal or vertical line, consisting of 9 squares, is said to be beautiful if it contains more red squares than blue ones. The maximum possible number of beautiful lines is equal to:
A. 14
B. 16
C. 12
D. 18
E. 20
Solution (ideas): Since there are 40 red squares and a beautiful line contains at least 5 red squares (squares, not tomatoes), we deduce that we can have at most 8 beautiful horizontal lines and
at most 8 beautiful vertical lines, totaling 16. Note: it would also need to be shown that such a configuration is possible. For example:

![](https://cdn.mathpix.com/cropped/2024_06_07_e3000f5a53642b98606cg-5.jpg?height=460&width=468&top_left_y=364&top_left_x=728)