From - Tue Aug 25 14:48:29 1998 From: John Scholes Newsgroups: sci.math,rec.puzzles Subject: Re: Russian 4 generalizations Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 06:41:50 +0100 Message-ID: References: Lines: 9 Given n>=2 and a,b>=1 such that a+b=n. Define m=min(a,b). Then we can arrange 2n-m+1 stars in an n x n array so that no a rows and b columns contain all the stars, but given any arrangement of 2n-m stars in an n x n array, we can always select a rows and b columns which contain all the stars. You may enjoy proving it! -- John Scholes