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Combinatorics Difficulty 7.7 National Olympiad, round 2 Prove it Germany

Problem:

Let a positive integer dd and a sequence (ai)i=1,2,3,\left(a_{i}\right)_{i=1,2,3, \ldots} of positive integers be given. We assume that the following two conditions are satisfied:
- Every positive integer occurs exactly once in the sequence.
- For all indices i10100i \geq 10^{100} we have ai+1ai2d\left|a_{i+1}-a_{i}\right| \leq 2 d.
Prove that there exist infinitely many indices jj for which ajj<d\left|a_{j}-j\right|<d holds.

Solution

Solution:

Suppose the claim were not satisfied. Then there exists an index N>10100N>10^{100} such that for all iNi \geq N either aiida_{i} \leq i-d or aii+da_{i} \geq i+d holds. In the first case, since iN>10100i \geq N>10^{100}, by the second assumption on the sequence we also have
ai+1ai+2did+2d=(i+1)+(d1) a_{i+1} \leq a_{i}+2 d \leq i-d+2 d=(i+1)+(d-1)
so ai+1(i+1)da_{i+1} \leq(i+1)-d must hold. By induction it follows that aijda_{i} \leq j-d for all jij \geq i.
We have thus shown:
(A) Either aii+da_{i} \geq i+d holds for all iNi \geq N, or
(B) there exists an MNM \geq N such that aiida_{i} \leq i-d holds for all iMi \geq M.
Let us first assume that (A) is satisfied. The numbers 1,,N1, \ldots, N must, by the first assumption on the sequence, each occur once in the sequence. However, we have aii+d>iNa_{i} \geq i+d>i \geq N for all iNi \geq N, that is, there are only the N1N-1 sequence terms a1,,aN1a_{1}, \ldots, a_{N-1} that can take one of these values. By the pigeonhole principle this yields a contradiction.
Now let us assume that (B) is satisfied. Let k=max{M,a1,,aM}k=\max \left\{M, a_{1}, \ldots, a_{M}\right\}. Then the kk sequence terms a1,,aka_{1}, \ldots, a_{k} are all less than kk, since for i=1,M1i=1, \ldots M-1 we have aimax{a1,,aM1}ka_{i} \leq \max \left\{a_{1}, \ldots, a_{M-1}\right\} \leq k and for i=M,,ki=M, \ldots, k we have aiid<ika_{i} \leq i-d<i \leq k. These kk numbers thus all lie in the set {1,2,,k1}\{1,2, \ldots, k-1\}. By the pigeonhole principle there therefore exist two indices 1i<jk1 \leq i<j \leq k with ai=aja_{i}=a_{j}, which contradicts the first assumption on the sequence.
Since we have obtained a contradiction in every case, the claim holds.

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