Problem

Source: India IMOTC Practice Test 2 Problem 1

Tags: combinatorics, graph theory



There are $n$ cities in a country, one of which is the capital. An airline operates bi-directional flights between some pairs of cities such that one can reach any city from any other city. The airline wants to close down some (possibly zero) number of flights, such that the number of flights needed to reach any particular city from the capital does not increase. Suppose that there are an odd number of ways that the airline can do this. Prove that the set of cities can be divided into two groups, such that there is no flight between two cities of the same group. Proposed by Pranjal Srivastava