MathDB
Lights on a Board

Source: OMM 2010 2

July 15, 2014
analytic geometryinvariantinductioncombinatorics unsolvedcombinatorics

Problem Statement

In each cell of an n×nn\times n board is a lightbulb. Initially, all of the lights are off. Each move consists of changing the state of all of the lights in a row or of all of the lights in a column (off lights are turned on and on lights are turned off).
Show that if after a certain number of moves, at least one light is on, then at this moment at least nn lights are on.