Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.
Updated
Claim. For integers and , the question of Problem 1112 has the answer yes exactly when . The dichotomy answers the Statement (precise) of the problem for every triple . Above the threshold a ratio linear in works: every sequence of positive integers with admits a sequence with for all and , for in the original development and for in the September revision of the paper. When no ratio works, and more: for every sequence of positive integers there is one with that meets for every such . In the notation of the site's commentary (page last edited 28 December 2025), exists if and only if , and then , independently of , with the revision claiming ; this agrees with the nonexistence of that Bollobás, Hegyvári and Jin proved ([BHJ97], on its claim page). The write-up is J. Land, A sharp dichotomy for bounded-gap sumsets, Theorem 1 (eight pages, dated September 2026), at the pinned commit of 2026-09-13. Its existence half places, by a nested-interval argument, a real with in a short fixed interval for all large , and takes to be the integer parts of with in : the gaps are or , and no -fold sum of members of is a remaining term of . Its nonexistence half shows that, for , the -fold sumset of every admissible contains a full congruence class from some point on, through a density consequence of Kneser's theorem and a finite subset-sum lemma (a set of at least three positive integers with greatest common divisor and maximum has a multiset of at most members of whose subset sums contain consecutive integers), and then builds one meeting every such tail. The -fold sumset allows repeated summands, as the site's does. The result was first posted on the problem's discussion thread on 2026-07-06, with the original development (existence bound , archived on Zenodo on 2026-07-25 as the record linked above), and submitted as a proof claim on 2026-07-17; on 2026-09-13 the paper and the Lean proof were replaced by the shortened argument described here, which the paper says is based on a manuscript supplied by Stijn Cambie and which improves the bound to . The revision's proof is not checked in this corpus.
Submission note. Posted to erdosproblems.com as a proof claim by Johan Land (account JohanLand) on 17 July 2026, giving "Fable 5, Opus 4.8, GPT 5.5 Pro" as the AI used:
Note: Proof previously discussed in the comment section before this "proof claim" functionality was added to the site. Briefly: For , exists iff , with - independently of . Existence: a Beatty sequence with slope $\gamma \in (k, d_2)$ confines to width- windows, and a nested-interval argument steers past every element of a lacunary . Non-existence: a single diagonal works once every admissible contains a full congruence class eventually; this reduces, via word combinatorics for two-letter gap alphabets (Sturmian case included) and a subset-sum lemma for larger ones - every finite with , admits a multiset of at most elements whose subset sums contain consecutive integers. Context: Everything is verified in Lean (see link below). More info: I've structured a repo to ease consumption of the proof: https://github.com/beetree/math_erdos_1112
Formalization. The repository's lean/Erdos1112.lean defines
RatioWorks k d₁ d₂ r (every with , strictly increasing and
admits an with , gaps in phrased
additively, and kFoldSumset k a disjoint from the range of ) and
Question k d₁ d₂ as the existence of such a natural ratio; a bridge
question_iff_questionInt proves the equivalence with the problem's integer
ratio. lean/Erdos1112Proof/Final.lean proves erdos_1112:
Question k d₁ d₂ ↔ k + 1 ≤ d₂ under 3 ≤ k, 1 ≤ d₁ and d₁ < d₂, with
erdos_1112_int for the integer form, erdos_1112_existence_bound for the
ratio and erdos_1112_strong_nonexistence for the varying-ratio form.
The toolchain is Lean v4.27.0; the repository's readme says its audit file
AxiomsCheck.lean permits only propext, Classical.choice and Quot.sound.
These files show no sorry at the pinned commit of 2026-09-13; this corpus has
not built, replayed or audited that revision. Boris Alexeev's lean-proofs
repository added on 2026-08-26 a port of the original development (existence
bound ) to Lean 4.33, under Land's name as informal and formal author
and citing the thread post and the original repository
(src/latest/ErdosProblems/Erdos1112.lean, linked above at a pinned commit);
this corpus built that port, as the Acceptance paragraph records.
Depends on. Nothing in this wiki; the argument is the paper's own.
Claimant and postings. The claimant is Johan Land, who directs and audits
the work; the proof claim names Fable 5, Opus 4.8 and GPT 5.5 Pro as the systems
used, and the paper's declaration says that in the original development Claude
(Fable 5 and Opus 4.8) contributed to the mathematical arguments with GPT-5.5
and Gemini 3.1 consulted for advice and review, that GPT-6-Astra and Claude
Sonnet 5 assisted with the revision and its formalization, and that the author
takes responsibility for the claims. The comments on the proof claim carry a
report of 2026-07-17 by a pseudonymous forum user who rebuilt the original Lean
development from scratch, found that the kernel accepts the final theorems with
only the three standard axioms and with no sorry and no native_decide, and
ran the certificate harnesses; a remark of 2026-08-19 by Stijn Cambie that the
hundred-page proof should be far shorter; and Land's notice of 2026-09-13 of the
revised paper. The rebuild is by an unnamed user, not a named reviewer, so it
adds no evidence kind.
Acceptance. Formalized. This corpus's verification built Boris Alexeev's
lean-proofs repository at the pinned commit 8822f7dd of 2026-09-15, linked
above (its src/latest project, Lean v4.33.0, Mathlib v4.33.0), whose
module ErdosProblems/Erdos1112.lean and development
ErdosProblems/Erdos1112/ are the port of Land's original development of
July 2026, existence ratio , credited by the port's header to Land
as informal and formal author; the September revision in Land's repository
was not built, so the ratio is not formalized here. The verification
checked the axioms of the four final theorems Erdos1112.erdos_1112,
Erdos1112.erdos_1112_int, Erdos1112.erdos_1112_strong_nonexistence and
Erdos1112.erdos_1112_existence_bound, which are exactly propext,
Classical.choice and Quot.sound. The comparator challenge
ComparatorChallenges/ErdosProblems/Erdos1112.lean of the same project pins
the four declarations with the definitions their types reach
(IsLacunaryWith, IsLacunaryWithInt, IsVarLacunaryWith, HasGapsIn and
kFoldSumset), and the fingerprint of each declaration was found identical
to the challenge's. The statements were audited clause by clause against the
problem's Statement: erdos_1112 proves that for all and
some natural ratio works if and only if , and
erdos_1112_int proves the same for an integer , the site's wording;
is infinite, strictly increasing and positive with , is
infinite and positive with gaps in stated additively,
allows repeated summands, and is taken literally. A
finite would make the question trivial, and allowing a finite
changes nothing. The build certifies the full answer this page claims, with
the varying-ratio nonexistence for
(erdos_1112_strong_nonexistence) and the ratio above the
threshold (erdos_1112_existence_bound); it does not certify the ratio
. Not reviewed: on the discussion thread the site's curator, Thomas
F. Bloom, wrote on 2026-07-13 that the main theorem erdos_1112 of the
original development is a correct formalization of the claim and that the
code compiles with no sorry, and that the curator had not yet tried to
understand the proof; the site's label is OPEN (LEAN), its commentary (page
last edited 28 December 2025) does not mention the claim, and the community
database's formalization pointer names Land's repository as the solution; the
curator has not marked the problem settled, so no reviewed evidence is
listed. Not refereed: the write-up is posted in Land's repository and archived
on Zenodo, with no journal publication.