Problem

Source: 2020 Thailand Mathematical Olympiad P2

Tags: combinatorics, Thailand



There are $63$ houses at the distance of $1, 2, 3, . . . , 63 \text{ km}$ from the north pole, respectively. Santa Clause wants to distribute vaccine to each house. To do so, he will let his assistants, $63$ elfs named $E_1, E_2, . . . , E_{63}$ , deliever the vaccine to each house; each elf will deliever vaccine to exactly one house and never return. Suppose that the elf $E_n$ takes $n$ minutes to travel $1 \text{ km}$ for each $n = 1,2,...,63$ , and that all elfs leave the north pole simultaneously. What is the minimum amount of time to complete the delivery?