Maths Olympiad Prep

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Combinatorics Difficulty 6.0 AIME, harder Prove it New Zealand

Problem:
Find all pairs of positive integers mm and nn such that the centres of the unit squares in a mm by nn grid of unit squares can be paired up so that the distance between the centres of each pair is exactly 22.

(A unit square has side length 11.)

Solution

Solution:
We will show that the answer is all pairs (a,b)(a,b) where either aa or bb (or both) is a multiple of 44. First, partition the grid into four subgrids AA, BB, CC, and DD

ABABAB
CDCDCD
ABABAB
CDCDCD

Note that, for any given square ss, all the square centres that are exactly 22 away from the centre of ss are in the same partition as ss itself. This means that ss must be paired with some square which is in the same partition as itself. Hence, each partition of squares must have an even number of squares. Meanwhile, if each partition of squares has an even number of squares, one of the dimensions of the subgrid must be even, and hence we can pair up the squares along that even dimension.

Hence, it suffices to find all values of aa and bb which create four subgrids which all have an even number of squares. Consider aa modulo 44: if a0a \equiv 0 (mod 44), then all subgrids will have an even dimension along the axis of aa. Otherwise, at least one of the subgrids will have an odd dimension along the axis of aa. The same reasoning holds for bb. Hence, if neither aa nor bb are multiples of 44, then one of the partitions will have an odd number of squares. However, if either aa or bb is a multiple of 44, then all partitions will have an even number of squares. Hence, we have shown that the answer is all pairs (a,b)(a,b) where either aa or bb (or both) is a multiple of 44.

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