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Combinatorics Difficulty 6.8 National Olympiad Prove it Croatia

In a country between every two cities there is a direct bus or a direct train line (all lines are two-way and they don't pass through any other city). Prove that all cities in that country can be arranged in two disjoint sets so that all cities in one set can be visited using only train so that no city is visited twice, and all cities in the other set can be visited using only bus so that no city is visited twice.

Solution

Let GG be the set of all cities in the country. We call a pair (A,Z)(A, Z), where AA and ZZ are disjoint subsets of GG good if all cities in the set AA can be visited using only bus such that no city is visited twice and all cities in the set ZZ can be visited using only train such that no city is visited twice.

Let (A,Z)(A, Z) be a good pair such that the set AZA \cup Z has the maximal number of elements. If we prove AZ=GA \cup Z = G, the statement of the problem holds.

Let us assume the opposite, i.e. there is a city gg which isn't from AA nor ZZ. Without loss of generality we can assume that AA and ZZ are non-empty, because otherwise we can transfer any city from a non-empty set to an empty one.

Let nn be the number of cities in the set AA, and mm the number of cities in the set ZZ. Let us arrange the cities from AA in the series a1,,ana_1, \dots, a_n such that every two consecutive cities in that series are connected by a direct bus line. Also, let us arrange the cities from ZZ in the series z1,,zmz_1, \dots, z_m such that every two consecutive cities in that series are connected by a direct train line.

Since we assumed that the pair (A,Z)(A, Z) is maximal, the cities gg and a1a_1 have to be connected by train (otherwise the pair (A{g},Z)(A \cup \{g\}, Z) would be a good pair whose union would have more elements than AZA \cup Z), and gg and z1z_1 have to be connected by bus (otherwise the pair (A,Z{g})(A, Z \cup \{g\}) would be a good pair whose union would have more elements than AZA \cup Z).

The cities a1a_1 and z1z_1 have to be connected by bus or by train.

If a1a_1 and z1z_1 are connected by bus, let us put A={z1,g,a1,,an}A' = \{z_1, g, a_1, \dots, a_n\} and Z={z2,,zm}Z' = \{z_2, \dots, z_m\}. Then (A,Z)(A', Z') is a good pair and the number of elements of AZA' \cup Z' is greater than the number of elements of AZA \cup Z, which contradicts the assumption.

If a1a_1 and z1z_1 are connected by train, let us put A={a2,,an}A'' = \{a_2, \dots, a_n\} and Z={a1,g,z1,z2,,zm}Z'' = \{a_1, g, z_1, z_2, \dots, z_m\}. Then (A,Z)(A'', Z'') is a good pair and the number of elements of AZA'' \cup Z'' is greater than the number of elements of AZA \cup Z, which contradicts the assumption.

Since all cases lead to contradiction, we conclude that the assumption was wrong and that every city is either in the set AA or in the set ZZ.

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