Problem:
Let be the set of vertices of a regular 21-gon. Given a non-empty subset of , let be the number of distinct lengths that occur between two distinct vertices in . What is the maximum value of as varies over all non-empty subsets of ?
Solution
Solution:
To simplify notation, we will let be and let be . First note that there are 10 different diagonal-lengths in a regular 21-gon. Now consider the following set of 5 vertices.

Note that each of the 10 different diagonal-lengths appear (exactly once each). So for this set of 5 vertices we have . We will now show that this is the maximum possible value for .
If is an arbitrary non-empty set of vertices, then there are two cases:
- Case 1: . The total number of pairs of vertices in is given by . Since this gives us the bound:
Thus in this case.
- Case 2: . The total number of distances in is at most 10 because there are only 10 different diagonal lengths in the 21-gon. Therefore
as required.
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