Problem

There are 25 masks of different colours. k sages play the following game. They are shown all the
masks. Then the sages agree on their strategy. After that the masks are put on them so that each
sage sees the masks on the others but can not see who wears each mask and does not see his own
mask. No communication is allowed. Then each of them simultaneously names one colour trying
to guess the colour of his mask. Find the minimum k for which the sages can agree so that at least
one of them surely guesses the colour of his mask.
Solution:
First we will prove that k 13. We label each colors with numbers 1, 2, ..., 25 and label the k
sages s1 , s2 , , sk . For clarity of this solution, lets assume there is a person, his name is Rho, who
supervise the game. Rho is the one who select the k masks and put them on the sages. Since there
25
25

are k ways to choose the mask, and k! to put them in sages face, Rho has k! k configurations
to be inputted for the games, we will say each of this configuration as Rhos input.
On the other hand, when the game is on, all sages will see k 1 numbers, and they need to based
their guess on these k 1 numbers. So their strategy will be based on how they handle these k 1
numbers that they will see on the field, we will call the set which contains these k 1 numbers as

25
situation. When the game is on, each sages will see different situations. Clearly there are k1
25

situations that can be formed, for convenient we denote N = k1 .
Now to test every possible Rhos Input , those sages can make the following table, called Strategy
Board, a N k table which will tells each of sage how to handle every possible situations.

Situations s1 s2 s3 sk
A1 w11 w12 w13 w1k
A2 w21 w22 w23 w2k
A3 w31 w32 w33 w3k
.. .. .. .. .. .. ..
. . . . . . .
.. .. .. .. .. .. ..
. . . . . . .
AN wN1 wN2 wN3 wNk

The number wi j denotes the color that s j should guess when he/she sees situation Ai on the field.
For example, when s1 sees situation Aq = {m2 , m3 , ..., mk }, then following the agreement of the
above Strategy Board, s1 must guess wq1 for his mask, if the current Rhos Input puts mask wq1
on s1 then the wq1 guess is correct.
All the guesses wi j in the above Strategy Table can either be correct or incorrect depending on the
Rhos Input at that time. To check wether the above Strategy Board is working , we need to check
the following condition:
For any Rhos input , at least one of the wi j on the Strategy Board above is a correct guess.

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Suppose that for each Rhos input, Rho count how many correct guesses are there on each input.
After all the
inputs are being tested, let say li is the number of correct guess on input i, for i =
1, 2..., k! 25
k . Let M be the total number of correct guesses. Since we have a working Strategy
Table, each of those inputs result on at least one correct guess, that is li 1, therefore

k!(25
k)
 
25
M= li k!
i=1 k

It is possible that, there are some wi j on the above Strategy Board which never become a correct
guess after all the inputs. Now if w pq was once a correct guess, is it possible that w pq to be a correct
guess again from the other input? When will w pq become the correct guess again? Suppose that
w pq became a correct guess when the input was (m1 , m2 , ..., mk1 ), which is when sage si wore
mask with color mi . This means sq wears mask with color mq which implies w pq = mq and sq see
situation A p = {m1 , m2 , ..., mq1 , mq+1 , ..., mk } on the field. The guess w pq will be correct again
when we have a given similar input , that is when sq also wears the same mask (color mq ) and see
the same situation on the field, this situation can be replicated by Rho (k 1)! times, by putting
mask mq on sq and then permutes the other k 1 masks to put them on s1 , s2 , ..., sq1 , sq+1 , ..., sk .
We conclude that each guesses on the table can be correct for at most (k 1)! times.
25

Since we have k k1 entries on the table, and each of them can become a correct guess at most
(k 1)! times, we have
   
25 25
M (k 1)! k = k!
k1 k1

Combining with the earlier bound, we have

   
25 25
k 13
k k1

Now to finish the problem , we just need to construct the strategy for
k = 13.
We will use the Halls
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Marriage Lemma for this task. Notice that on this case we have k1 = 25k = 25

12 = 5200300 =
N. Let X1 , X2 , ..., XN be all k-subsets of {1, 2, ..., 25}, each of this 13-subset can produce/derive
exactly k many (k 1)-subsets as ilustrated below

X1 = {m1 , m2 , ..., m13 } X2 = {n1 , n2 , ..., n13 } XN = {t1 ,t2 , ...,t13 }

X1 /{m1 } X1 /{m2 } X1 /{m12 } X1 /{m13 } X2 /{n1 } X2 /{n2 } X2 /{n12 } X2 /{n13 } XN /{n1 } XN /{n2 } XN /{n12 } XN /{n13 }

Lets call the 13-subset X1 , X2 , ..., XN as reality and their derived 12-subset as their situation. We
have the same number of realities and situations, which is N, and each reality comes from exactly
13 situation. By adding one element, we can make a situation to become a reality, say adding m13
to situation {m1 , m2 , ..., m12 } we make it into a reality {m1 , m2 , ..., m12 , m13 }, since we can choose

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25 12 = 13 elements to put on this 12-subset, this means each situations can become exactly 13
different realities.
Using Halls Theorem, we will prove that, there is a matching from the set of realities to the set of
situations , such that : each reality is associated to exactly one of its derived situation, and no two
situations is associated to the same reality. So we have matching

X1 A1 = X1 /{1 } X2 A2 = X2 /{2 } XN AN = XN /{N }

We just need to check the Halls Condition holds, that is, for any l realities, the union of their
derived situation has cardinality at least l. Let say we take realities X1 , X2 , ..., Xl , now counting
with multiplicity, since each has 13 derived situations, we have in total 13 l situations, but some
situations may be counted more than twice since they can belongs to more than one reality. How-
ever, as we have observed in the previous paragraph, each situations can only belong to at most 13
realities. So in those 13 l counts, there can be at least l distinct elements amongst them and this
prove that the Halls Condition is satisfied.
Back to the original problem, this means that the sages can use the following strategy: When they
see the situation Ai , their guess is i . We will prove that this strategy works. For an arbitrary
Rhos input, say (m1 , m2 , ..., m13 ), this input can be made into reality {m1 , m2 , ..., m13 }, let say it
is a reality Xq where q is some natural number N. Now by the above matching we have, the
matching of Xq is situation Aq = Xq /{q }. This means q is one of m1 , m2 , ..., m13 , let say q = m p
for some 1 p 13. This means, the sage s p must see situation Aq on the field, and hence
according to the strategy he/she will guess q , which is m p , this means sage s p guess correctly.