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Combinatorics Difficulty 7.5 National olympiad, round 2 Prove it Balkan Mathematical Olympiad

The International Mathematical Olympiad is being organized in Japan, where a folklore belief is that the number 4 brings bad luck. The opening ceremony takes place at the Grand Theatre where each row has the capacity of 55 seats. What is the maximum number of contestants that can be seated in a single row with the restriction that no two of them are 4 seats apart (so that bad luck during the competition is avoided)?

Solution

Denote the desired number by tt. Consider the set BB consisting of all integers of the form 10a+b10a + b, for a=0,1,2,3,4,5a = 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and b=1,2,3,4,5b = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, i.e.
B={1,2,3,4,5,11,12,13,14,15,21,22,23,24,25,,51,52,53,54,55}. B = \{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, \dots, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55\}.
If (10a1+b1)(10a2+b2)=5(10a_1 + b_1) - (10a_2 + b_2) = 5 then 10(a1a2)=b2b1+510(a_1 - a_2) = b_2 - b_1 + 5. Therefore, b2b1+5b_2 - b_1 + 5 is divisible by 1010. On the other hand, 4b2b14-4 \leq b_2 - b_1 \leq 4 applying 1b2b1+591 \leq b_2 - b_1 + 5 \leq 9, a contradiction. Since BB has cardinality 3030, we have t30t \geq 30.

Consider subset BB of AA having cardinality tt. A pair (m,n)(m, n) is called good if mn=5|m - n| = 5, mBm \in B and nBn \notin B.

For every m{1,2,3,4,5,51,52,53,54,55}m \in \{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55\} there exists exactly one nn for (m,n)(m, n) to be a good pair. For all remaining values of mm there exist two values of nn for (m,n)(m, n) to be a good pair. Therefore, the number of good pairs is at least 10+2(t10)=2t1010 + 2(t - 10) = 2t - 10. On the other hand, this number is at most 2(55t)2(55 - t) (since for every nn there exist at most two good pairs (m,n)(m, n)). Thus,
2t101102t 2t - 10 \leq 110 - 2t
applying t30t \leq 30. Therefore t=30t = 30.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.