English

A counterexample to Stein's Equi-n-square Conjecture

Combinatorics 2018-05-10 v3

Abstract

In 1975 Stein conjectured that in every n×nn\times n array filled with the numbers 1,,n1, \dots, n with every number occuring exactly nn times, there is a partial transversal of size n1n-1. In this note we show that this conjecture is false by constructing such arrays without partial transverals of size n142lnnn-\frac{1}{42}\ln n.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1711.00429,
  title  = {A counterexample to Stein's Equi-n-square Conjecture},
  author = {Alexey Pokrovskiy and Benny Sudakov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1711.00429},
  year   = {2018}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T22:33:14.900Z