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Combinatorics Difficulty 6.5 National Olympiad Prove it Ukraine

There are four countries, each consists of several cities. The cities of any two countries are connected by at least 56\frac{5}{6} of a number of all possible roads between these two countries. Prove that it is possible to choose one city from each country so that any two of them are connected. Any pair of cities can be connected by no more than one road.
(Nazar Serdyuk)

Solution

Let us denote countries as X,Y,Z,TX, Y, Z, T. We randomly choose one city x,y,z,tx, y, z, t from each country respectively. In case there are all 6 roads between them, then the statement has been proved.

In case there is quadruple that is connected via less than 5 roads, then there has to exist a quadruple that is connected via all 6 roads, otherwise, the number of possible roads is less than 56\frac{5}{6}. Therefore, in order to comply with the problem statement, each four cities have to be connected with exactly 5 roads. Same every two countries have to be connected via exactly 56\frac{5}{6} from the total number of possible roads between those countries, hence there are unconnected cities between countries.

Choose cities xXx \in X, yYy \in Y that are not connected. Consider arbitrary zZz \in Z and tTt \in T. Since quadruple x,y,z,tx, y, z, t is connected with exactly 5 roads, then z,tz, t have to be connected. Since we chose arbitrary cities zZz \in Z and tTt \in T, then every two cities of ZZ and TT are connected, which yields a contradiction with connection between countries.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.