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PrintXXVI OBM
Brazil counting and probability
Problem
Consider all the ways of writing exactly ten times each one of the numbers in the squares of a board. Find the greatest integer with the property that there is always a row or a column with different numbers.

Solution
Let's count in two ways the number of ordered pairs , where is a digit and is a row or column containing . For simplicity, let a line be a row or a column. Since there are occurrences of , they are present in at least lines (the intersections of the rows and columns must cover all ten numbers). So the number of pairs are at least . Since there are lines, one line must contain at least different numbers. The
following example shows that the answer is indeed :
following example shows that the answer is indeed :
Final answer
4
Techniques
Counting two waysPigeonhole principle