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Let be an additive basis of order . Let be the set of integers which are the sum of or fewer distinct . Is it true that ? (Where the implied constant may depend on both and .)
Source: erdosproblems.com/880
An accepted solution exists. The statement is false.
The site labels the problem PROVED, but its commentary records the answer of Hegyvári, Hennecart and Plagne [HHP07]: yes for , with for all large , and no for every . The Statement asks whether the gaps are bounded for every basis of every order . Erdős's own wording, quoted in the introduction of [HHP07] from [Er98], asks the same for general ("Is it true that ... The bound may of course depend on and on the sequence"). Theorem 1(ii) of [HHP07] gives, for each , a set with containing all large integers, a basis of order in the problem's sense, whose sums of or fewer distinct elements have unbounded gaps; the authors describe the result as "a negative answer to a question by Burr and Erdős" and "an explicit counterexample to the Erdős-Burr conjecture". So the Statement is disproved, and the case , where Theorem 1(i) gives for all large , is the part of the question that holds (Hegyvári, Hennecart and Plagne, accepted, full). The page departs from the site's label here: PROVED, the site's "solved in the affirmative", contradicts both the theorem in print and the site's own commentary, and no source offers a reading of the question under which the answer is yes.