Is it possible to write five integers on a board so that for any two numbers, there exists a pair of numbers among the remaining three whose sum is equal to the sum of the original two numbers?
Ukrainian National Mathematical Olympiad, Third Round, First Tour
Solution
It's enough to choose the following numbers: , , , , . Then we can write down the sets of integers, but we can also apply the following reasoning: for any two numbers, say, , , selected by Petrik, from one side exists pair of numbers , whose sum is the opposite to the initial, and, from another side, there exists a triple of numbers except , , and their sum also is , as the sum of all five numbers is zero. So we get a correspondence between the numbers from the left and from the right parts of the board.
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