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National and Regional Contests
Argentina Contests
Argentina National Olympiad
2005 Argentina National Olympiad
2
2
Part of
2005 Argentina National Olympiad
Problems
(1)
two-letter alphabet on Babba Island
Source: Argentina 2005 OMA L3 p2
5/12/2024
On Babba Island they use a two-letter alphabet,
a
a
a
and
b
b
b
, and every (finite) sequence of letters is a word. For each set
P
P
P
of six words of
4
4
4
letters each, we denote
N
P
N_P
N
P
to the set of all words that do not contain any of the words of
P
P
P
as a syllable (subword). Prove that if
N
P
N_P
N
P
is finite, then all its words are of length less than or equal to
10
10
10
, and find a set
P
P
P
such that
N
P
N_P
N
P
is finite and contains at least one word of length
10
10
10
.
combinatorics