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Combinatorics Difficulty 6.3 National olympiad Prove it Croatia

An n×nn \times n square board is given, where nn is an odd positive integer. Each of the 2n(n+1)2n(n+1) unit segments delimiting the unit squares is coloured either red or blue. It is known that there are no more than n2n^2 red unit segments.
Prove that there is a unit square on the board whose border comprises at least three blue segments.

Solution

Assume the contrary, i.e. that there is no square bordered by three or four blue segments. Then each square is bordered by at least two red segments.

Now we count the pairs (P,r)(P, r), where PP is a unit square, and rr is a red segment adjacent to PP. We will count them in two different ways.

Since every square is bordered by at least two red segments, we have at least 2n22n^2 such pairs. On the other hand, each segment on the edge of the board has only one adjacent square, while the interior segments have two adjacent squares. This shows that we can express the number of pairs (P,r)(P, r) as V+2UV+2U, where VV is the number of red segments on the edge of the board, and UU the number of interior red segments. Thus 2n22U+V2n^2 \le 2U+V.

Furthermore, since there are no more than n2n^2 red segments, we also have U+Vn2U+V \le n^2. Adding these two inequalities we get V=0V=0 and U=n2U=n^2.

This shows that the inequalities we derived are in fact equalities, so that each square is bordered by exactly two red segments and all the red segments are interior (not on the edge of the board).

Now we checker the board, black-white. Notice that each white square contains exactly two red segments, and that each red segment belongs to a uniquely determined white square. This means that there are 2B2B red segments, where BB is the number of white squares. However, this leads to a contradiction because we know that there are exactly n2n^2 red segments, and n2n^2 is odd.

This shows that our assumption was wrong, so there must be some unit square with at least three blue adjacent segments.

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