Maths Olympiad Prep

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, 2024

Combinatorics Difficulty 7.0 National Olympiad, round 2 Prove it Hungary

Bart, Lisa and Maggie play the following game: Bart colors finitely many points red or blue on a circle such that no four colored points can be chosen on the circle such that their colors are blue-red-blue-red (the four points do not have to be consecutive). Lisa chooses finitely many of the colored points. Now Bart gives the circle (possibly rotated) to Maggie with Lisa's chosen points, however, without their colors. Finally, Maggie colors all the points of the circle to red or blue. Lisa and Maggie wins the game, if Maggie correctly guessed the colors of Bart's points. A strategy of Lisa and Maggie is called a winning strategy, if they can win the game for all possible colorings by Bart. Prove that Lisa and Maggie have a winning strategy, where Lisa chooses at most cc points in all possible cases, and find the smallest possible value of cc.

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Source: KöMaL, licensed Rights held by KöMaL and the MATFUND Foundation. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project. Solutions are the publisher's, linked not copied.