Problem

Source: China Mathematical Olympiad 1991 problem6

Tags: combinatorics unsolved, combinatorics



A football is covered by some polygonal pieces of leather which are sewed up by three different colors threads. It features as follows: i) any edge of a polygonal piece of leather is sewed up with an equal-length edge of another polygonal piece of leather by a certain color thread; ii) each node on the ball is vertex to exactly three polygons, and the three threads joint at the node are of different colors. Show that we can assign to each node on the ball a complex number (not equal to $1$), such that the product of the numbers assigned to the vertices of any polygonal face is equal to $1$.