Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Two not so easy ones

Take this first one from USAMO 2004.

1.
Suppose a_1, \dots, a_n are integers whose greatest common divisor is 1. Let S be a set of integers with the following properties:

(a) For i=1, \dots, n, a_i \in S.
(b) For i,j = 1, \dots, n (not necessarily distinct), a_i - a_j \in S.
(c) For any integers x,y \in S, if x+y \in S, then x-y \in S.

Prove that S must be equal to the set of all integers.
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If you hit the above one, try this, as of now I haven't got it yet.

2.
A friend of mine is organizing a board game tournament with 5 rounds. There are 12 competing players. One of the games is a 6-player game. The other 4 games are different 4-player games. My friend has enough copies of every game, so each round will be played with multiple parallel game tables.

The question is: can he assign the players to the tables in such a way that
every player plays every other player exactly 1 or 2 times during the tournament? "Playing" means: sitting at the same table during any round.

So, the assignment should look like this:

round1: XXXXXX XXXXXX (2 tables of 6 people each)

round2: XXXX XXXX XXXX (3 tables of 4 people each)

round3: XXXX XXXX XXXX

round4: XXXX XXXX XXXX

round5: XXXX XXXX XXXX

I hope someone finds a solution for my friend!!

(courtesy :Big fury monster)

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