Maths Olympiad Prep

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Combinatorics Difficulty 5.3 AIME, harder Find the answer

The numbers from 1 to 360 are partitioned into 9 subsets of consecutive integers and the sums of the numbers in each subset are arranged in the cells of a 3×33 \times 3 square. Is it possible that the square turns out to be a magic square?

Remark: A magic square is a square in which the sums of the numbers in each row, in each column and in both diagonals are all equal.

Answer: Yes.

A number or a short expression. Fractions can be typed as 3/2, and spacing doesn't matter.

Solution

. If the numbers a1,a2,,a9a_{1}, a_{2}, \ldots, a_{9} form a 3×33 \times 3 magic square, then the numbers a1+d,a2+d,,a9+da_{1}+d, a_{2}+d, \ldots, a_{9}+d form a 3×33 \times 3 magic square, too. Hence it is sufficient to divide all the numbers into parts with equal numbers of elements: i.e. from 40k+140 k+1 to 40(k+1),k=0,1,,840(k+1), k=0,1, \ldots, 8. Then we need to arrange the least numbers of these parts (i.e. the numbers 1,41,81,,3211,41,81, \ldots, 321 ) in the form of a magic square (we omit here an example, it is similar to the magic square with numbers 1 , 2,,9)2, \ldots, 9). After that all other numbers 1+s,41+s,,321+s1+s, 41+s, \ldots, 321+s will also form a magic square (s=1,,39)(s=1, \ldots, 39), and so do the whole sums.

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Source: NuminaMath-1.5, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.