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Combinatorics Difficulty 8.4 Shortlist Prove it Romania

A planar country has an odd number of cities separated by pairwise distinct distances. Some of these cities are connected by direct two-way flights. Each city is directly connected to exactly two other cities, and the latter are located farthest from it. Prove that, using these flights, one may go from any city to any other city.

Solution

Consider the graph GG whose vertices are the cities and whose edges are the direct two-way flights. We must show that GG is connected.

Assuming GG has at least two components, we show that the cardinality of each component is even; this contradicts the fact that the total number of vertices is odd, whence the conclusion.

Lemma. If ABAB and XYXY are edges in different components of GG, then the segments ABAB and XYXY cross at an interior point.

Proof. Two cases are to be ruled out:

(1) The lines ABAB and XYXY meet outside both open segments (AB)(AB) and (XY)(XY), possibly at an ideal point; that is, after a suitable relabelling (if necessary), ABXYABXY is a convex (possibly degenerate) quadrangle.
In this case, the segments AXAX and BYBY cross at some point OO, so AX+BY=(OA+OX)+(OB+OY)=(OA+OB)+(OX+OY)AB+XYAX + BY = (OA+OX)+(OB+OY) = (OA+OB)+(OX+OY) \ge AB+XY. Consequently, either AXABAX \ge AB, in which case AA is connected to XX, contradicting the fact that the two lie in different components of GG; or BYXYBY \ge XY, in which case YY is connected to BB, contradicting the fact that the two lie in different components of GG.

(2) The lines ABAB and XYXY cross at an interior point of exactly one of open segments (AB)(AB) and (XY)(XY), say, the latter; that is, after a suitable relabelling (if necessary), the segment ABAB lies inside the triangle AXYAXY.
In this case, AB<max(AX,AY)AB < \max(AX, AY), since the segment ABAB lies along a cevian in the triangle AXYAXY, so AA is connected to (exactly) one of XX and YY, contradicting the fact that AA and XX, YY lie in different components of GG.

Back to the problem, since every vertex has degree 22, each component of GG is a circuit. Let CC be one such and let XYXY be an edge of GG whose endpoints do not belong to CC. By the lemma, every two consecutive vertices of CC lie on opposite sides of the line XYXY, so CC has an even number of vertices. This ends the proof.

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