Maths Olympiad Prep

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Combinatorics Difficulty 5.9 AIME, harder Prove it Ireland

Suppose that each point of the plane is coloured either black or white. Show that there is a set of three points of the same colour which form the vertices of an equilateral triangle.

Solution

Assume, if possible, that the result is false so every equilateral triangle in the plane has two vertices of different colours. Consider a regular hexagon ABCDEFABCDEF with centre SS.

Figure 1

Assume SS is coloured black. One of the vertices of the triangle BDFBDF must be black; assume it is BB. Considering the equilateral triangles SBASBA and SBCSBC, then AA and CC' are both white. From the triangle ACEACE, then EE is black and from SEFSEF the vertex FF is white. If GG is the point of intersection of BABA and EFEF, then we get a contradiction for the colouring of GG. If it is white (black) then the triangle GAFGAF (GBEGBE) is an equilateral triangle with all the vertices of the same colour. So we conclude that there is an equilateral triangle whose vertices do have the same colour.

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