In this post, I will present three graph theory problems in increasing difficulty, each with a common theme that one would determine a property of an edge in a complete graph through repeated iterations, and seek to achieve a greater objective. ESPR Summer Program Application: Alice and Bob play the following game on a $K_n$ ($n\ge 3$): initially all edges are uncolored, and each turn, Alice chooses an uncolored edge then Bob chooses to color it red or blue. The game ends when any vertex is adjacent to $n-1$ red edges, or when every edge is colored; Bob wins if and only if both condition holds at that time. Devise a winning strategy for Bob. This is more of a warm-up to the post, since it has a different flavor from the other two problems, and isn't as demanding in terms of experience with combinatorics. However, do note that when this problem was first presented, applicants did not know the winner ahead of time; it would be difficult to believe that Bob can hold such a strong
Hii everyone! Today I will be discussing a few geometry problems in which once you "guess" or "claim" the important things, then the problem can easily be finished using not-so-fancy techniques (e.g. angle chasing, power-of-point etc. Sometimes you would want to use inversion or projective geometry but once you have figured out that some particular synthetic property should hold, the finish shouldn't be that non trivial) This post stresses more about intuition rather than being rigorous. When I did these problems myself, I used freehand diagrams (not geogebra or ruler/compass) because I feel that gives a lot more freedom to you. By freedom, I mean, the power to guess. To elaborate on this - Suppose you drew a perfect diagram on paper using ruler and compass, then you would be too rigid on what is true in the diagram which you drew. But sometimes that might just be a coincidence. e.g. Let's say a question says $D$ is a random point on segment $BC$, so maybe