Let be a regular -gon . Find all positive integers such that for each permutation there exists such that the triangles and are both acute, both right or both obtuse.
Solution
Let be a regular -gon . We aim to find all positive integers such that for each permutation , there exists such that the triangles and are both acute, both right, or both obtuse.
Consider first a regular -gon for . Let and be two vertices which are diametrically opposite. If and are still diametrically opposite, then any third vertex will work since .
Otherwise, let be the vertex such that is diametrically opposite to . Then . Note that this is trivially true for an equilateral triangle, but it is false for a regular pentagon (consider and ).
Consider now a regular -gon for . Clearly, there are no right triangles. The number of obtuse triangles with a particular diagonal as the longest side is equal to the number of vertices between the endpoints of this diagonal, going the shorter way.
Since there are diagonals of each length, the total number of obtuse triangles is
The total number of triangles is
Since
for , there are more obtuse triangles than acute ones. By the pigeonhole principle, there exist 3 vertices such that their initial and permuted positions both determine obtuse triangles.
Therefore, the property holds for all except .
The answer is: \boxed{n \neq 5}.