Problem

Source: India Practice EGMO TST 2025 P3

Tags: algebra



Sunaina and Malay play a game on the coordinate plane. Sunaina has two pawns on $(0,0)$ and $(x,0)$, and Malay has a pawn on $(y,w)$, where $x,y,w$ are all positive integers. They take turns alternately, starting with Sunaina. In their turn they can move one of their pawns one step vertically up or down. Sunaina wins if at any point in time all the three pawns are colinear. Find all values of $x,y$ for which Sunaina has a winning strategy irrespective of the value of $w$. Proposed by NV Tejaswi