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Combinatorics Difficulty 6.8 National olympiad Prove it Russia

Some pairs of cities in a country are connected with one-directional direct flights (between any two cities, there is at most one flight).
We say that a city A is accessible for a city B if one may reach the city A starting at B (perhaps with zero flights or more than one flight in a chain). Assume that for any two cities P and Q there exists a city R for which each of P and Q is accessible. Prove that there exists a city for which every city is accessible. (V. Dolnikov)

Solution

Choose the city with a maximal number of cities accessible from it.

First solution. Number all the cities in the country as A1,A2,,AnA_1, A_2, \dots, A_n. By the condition, there exists a city B2B_2 for which both A1A_1 and A2A_2 are accessible. Next, the cities A3A_3 and B2B_2 are accessible for some city B3B_3. Since from B2B_2 one can reach A1A_1 and A2A_2, they are also accessible for B3B_3. Continuing in the same way, we eventually find that there exists a city BnB_n for which AnA_n and Bn1B_{n-1} are accessible. Then for BnB_n, the cities A1,A2,,An1A_1, A_2, \dots, A_{n-1} are also accessible, since one can reach them via Bn1B_{n-1}.

Second solution. Consider a city AA for which the maximal number of cities are accessible (if there are several such cities, pick any one of them). Suppose that some city BB is not accessible for AA. Then, by the condition, there exists a city CC for which both AA and BB are accessible. But then for CC, BB is accessible, as well as all the cities accessible for AA. This contradicts the choice of AA; therefore, all cities are accessible for AA.

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