Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /2 of 2

Combinatorics Difficulty 9.2 IMO level Prove it India

In the fictional country of Mahishmati, there are 5050 cities, including a capital city. Some pairs of cities are connected by two-way flights. Given a city AA, an ordered list of cities C1,,C50C_1, \dots, C_{50} is called an antitour from AA if
* every city (including AA) appears in the list exactly once, and
* for each k{1,2,,50}k \in \{1, 2, \dots, 50\}, it is impossible to go from AA to CkC_k by a sequence of exactly kk (not necessarily distinct) flights.

Baahubali notices that there is an antitour from AA for any city AA. Further, he can take a sequence of flights, starting from the capital and passing through each city exactly once. Find the least possible total number of antitours from the capital city.

Solution

Rephrase in terms of graph theory:
Let GG be a connected graph on 5050 vertices. Given a vertex AA, a permutation (V1,,V50)(V_1, \dots, V_{50}) of the vertices of GG is called an antitour from AA if the following condition holds for every integer kk with 1k501 \le k \le 50: there is no walk of length kk from AA to VkV_k. Given that every vertex in GG admits at least one antitour, and that GG has a Hamiltonian path, find the least possible number of antitours from some vertex of GG.
Let N=50N = 50; we claim that the answer is ((N/2)!)2((N/2)!)^2.

Bound. Observe that if VV can be reached by a walk of length dd, then it can be reached by a walk of length d+2kd + 2k for any non-negative integer kk, simply by going to VV and then going back-and-forth on some adjacent edge kk times.

Claim 1 The graph is bipartite.
Proof. Indeed, suppose there is some odd cycle A0,A1,,A2iA_0, A_1, \dots, A_{2i}. Consider an antitour C1,,CNC_1, \dots, C_N from A0A_0. Note that for 1k2i1 \le k \le 2i, AkA_k can be reached from A0A_0 by kk moves (and thus in k+2jk+2j moves) and also in 2i+1k2i+1-k (and thus in 2i+1k+2j2i+1-k+2j moves). Now any integer n2in \ge 2i can be written as either k+2jk+2j (if nk(mod2)n \equiv k \pmod 2) or as 2i+1k+2j2i+1-k+2j (if n≢k(mod2)n \not\equiv k \pmod 2), so none of the AkA_k's can be CnC_n for n2in \ge 2i. Thus the vertices A1,,A2iA_1, \dots, A_{2i} must be C1,,C2i1C_1, \dots, C_{2i-1} in some order, which is impossible. \square

Proof. Alternately, one can also argue the initial part as is and then since the distance of any vertex not in the cycle is at most N(2i+1)N - (2i+1). Now, from any vertex AjA_j in the cycle, consider an anti-tour. Let the NNth in this anti-tour be VjV_j. Now, the distance of VjV_j to the cycle is at most N(2i+1)N - (2i+1) and there is a path of length 2i+1\le 2i+1 from AjA_j to the vertex to which VjV_j has the shortest path in the cycle with odd or even number of steps. Thus, there is an even and an odd path from AjA_j to VjV_j in N\le N moves. This is clearly a contradiction! \square

Since the Hamiltonian path must contain an equal number of vertices from each part, the parts have N/2N/2 vertices each. If the capital is in part A={A1,,AN/2}A = \{A_1, \dots, A_{N/2}\}, and the other part is B={B1,,BN/2}B = \{B_1, \dots, B_{N/2}\}, then one can form an antitour by putting the AiA_i's in the odd positions in any order and BiB_i's in the even positions in any order. There are ((N/2)!)2((N/2)!)^2 ways to do this, which proves our bound.

Construction. Consider the complete bipartite graph KN/2,N/2K_{N/2,N/2}, with parts {A1,,AN/2}\{A_1, \dots, A_{N/2}\} and {B1,,BN/2}\{B_1, \dots, B_{N/2}\}. Any antitour from A1A_1 must have all the BiB_i's in the even positions since any BiB_i is reachable in 11 move (and thus in any odd number of moves). Thus there are at most ((N/2)!)2((N/2)!)^2 antitours for this. \square

We can have alternate constructions. For example: Let A1,,A50A_1, \dots, A_{50} be the Hamiltonian path, with A1A_1 capital. Add the edges A1A4,A1A6,,A1A50A_1A_4, A_1A_6, \dots, A_1A_{50} and A2A5,A2A7,,A2A49A_2A_5, A_2A_7, \dots, A_2A_{49}.

Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.

Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.