Azra thought of four real numbers and wrote on the blackboard the sums of all pairs of imagined numbers, and then she deleted one of the sums. There were numbers , , , and left on the blackboard. What numbers did Azra think of? (M. Bašić, M. Bombardelli)
Solution
Let , , and be the numbers Azra thought of. Without loss of generality, we can assume that the deleted sum is . Then there are numbers , , , and written on the blackboard, i.e.
Since
among the numbers on the blackboard we can choose two pairs of numbers with equal sums. We easily find the only such pairs , and therefore the sum of all numbers Azra thought of equals .
Among the numbers on the blackboard, the number does not appear in the last equality (so ) and the deleted number equals .
Let us now change the notation. Let , , , be the numbers Azra thought of, such that . We know that .
Since , obviously is the smallest sum, and is the largest, so , . Now it is easy to see that the sum is smaller than all the sums except , and analogously is larger than all the sums except . So, and . Finally, .
We see that , i.e. , and further , and .
Let us check that the other equalities are satisfied: , , .
Azra thought of numbers , , and .