MathDB
Spring 2020 Team Round Problem 13

Source:

January 3, 2021

Problem Statement

In the game of Flow, a path is drawn through a 3×33\times3 grid of squares obeying the following rules: i A path is continuous with no breaks (it can be drawn without lifting a pencil). ii A path that spans multiple squares can only be drawn between colored squares that share a side. iii A path cannot go through a square more than once. Compute the number of ways to color a positive number of squares on the grid such that a valid path can be drawn. An example of one such coloring and a valid path is shown below. [Insert Diagram] Proposed by Alex Li