Problem

Source: Tournament of Towns, Senior Ο-Level Paper, Spring 2020 , p3

Tags: combinatorics



There are $41$ letters on a circle, each letter is $A$ or $B$. It is allowed to replace $ABA$ by $B$ and conversely, as well as to replace $BAB$ by $A$ and conversely. Is it necessarily true that it is possible to obtain a circle containing a single letter repeating these operations? Maxim Didin