Maths Olympiad Prep

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Combinatorics Difficulty 6.2 National olympiad Prove it Romania

Find all the integers n2n \ge 2 with the property: the cells of a n×nn \times n board can be colored with several colors, so that each cell CC has exactly two neighbouring cells with the same color as CC. Here neighbouring cells means cells with a common side.

Solution

Indeed, if nn is even, then we can divide the board into squares 2×22 \times 2. Now we pick a different color for each such square and use it for the cells of that square. This coloring clearly satisfies the requirement.

To prove that nn must be even, start from any cell SS of the board and move from each cell CC to its neighbour having the same color as CC and which has not been previously visited. Since the board is finite, this procedure must stop at some point, meaning that the next step takes us to an already visited cell VV. Since each cell has exactly two neighbours with the same color as CC, the cell VV must be SS. So, for each cell SS of the board we have a path PSP_S, constructed as above. Notice that if two such paths have a common cell, then they must coincide, because these paths have the same pairs of 'consecutive cells' (they may have different starting points and the order in which the consecutive cells are covered can be reversed). Therefore, the number of the board's cells is the sum of the numbers of the cells of the different paths PSP_S.

Color now the board chess-wise. Each pair of consecutive cells of a path is made of a black and a white cell, therefore each path must have an even number of cells. This shows that the number n2n^2 of the board's cells is the sum of some even numbers, so nn is even.

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