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Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.

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Claim. There are five points in the plane, no three on a line and no four on a circle, determining four distinct distances that occur 44, 33, 22 and 11 times: the instance n=5n=5 of Problem 217, answered yes. The construction is described by Erdős in his 1983 lecture transcript Combinatorial problems in geometry, Math. Chronicle 12 (1983), 35–54, p. 54 (the paper link; carded as erdos_1983_combinatorial_problems_geometry), where he credits it to Pomerance and says it corrected his own belief that no example with more than four points exists. Take a unit equilateral triangle OABOAB, its circumcenter CC, and a point DD on the unit circle about OO with CD=BDCD=BD. The unit distance occurs four times (OAOA, OBOB, ABAB, ODOD), the circumradius 1/31/\sqrt3 three times (OCOC, ACAC, BCBC), the distance CD=BDCD=BD twice and ADAD once; the transcript states that no three of the points are collinear and no four concyclic. Either of the two choices of DD works.

Covers. The instance n=5n=5. The property of the problem does not pass to subsets, so nothing is claimed for any other nn. The transcript adds that a Hungarian high-school student had found a six-point example, unpublished; the instances n=6n=6, 77 and 88 are settled on [[problems/distance_problems/E0217/claims/1989_01_01_palasti|Palásti's six-point]], seven-point and eight-point claim pages.

Depends on. Nothing in this wiki.

Standing. Claimed. The construction's only publication is Erdős's lecture transcript, not a refereed paper by the claimant, and the elementary check of its distances is not an outside review; the site's remarks credit the example to Pomerance on a problem the site labels OPEN, which is commentary and not acceptance.