Maths Olympiad Prep

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, 2011

Combinatorics Difficulty 7.6 National Olympiad, round 2 Prove it Baltic Way

Let TT denote the 15-element set T={10a+b:1a<b6}T = \{10a+b : 1 \le a < b \le 6\}. Let STS \subseteq T be a subset of TT in which all 6 digits appear and in which no 3 members exist which contain together all 6 digits 1, 2, ..., 6. Determine the largest possible size nn of SS.

Solution

Consider the numbers of TT, which contain 11 or 22. Certainly, no 33 of them can contain all 66 digits and all 66 digits appear. Hence n9n \ge 9.

Consider the partitions:
12, 36, 45,
13, 24, 56,
14, 26, 35,
15, 23, 46,
16, 25, 34.

Since every row is a partition of {1,2,...,6}\{1, 2, ..., 6\}, it contains all 66 digits, SS can contain at most two numbers of each of the 55 rows, i.e. n10n \le 10.

Now we will prove that n=9n = 9 is the correct number. Therefore we assume that n=10n = 10 and will exclude this case by contradiction. Certainly, there is a digit, say 11, which does not appear at least twice (otherwise at most 33 numbers are missing in SS) and at most 44 times (otherwise this digit does not appear in the members of SS at all). Obviously, every row of the above set of partitions contains exactly 22 members of SS. W.l.o.g. assume that 12,13S12, 13 \notin S and 16S16 \in S. Then consider the following partitions, where bold-faced numbers are members of SS and numbers in italics are not:
12, 36, 45,
13, 24, 56,
14, 26, 35,
15, 23, 46,
16, 25, 34.

By 16,45S16, 45 \in S it follows 23S23 \notin S and by 24,36S24, 36 \in S it follows 15S15 \notin S. Now SS is missing at least 22 members (15,2315, 23) of the partition 15,23,4615, 23, 46, which is a contradiction.

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