Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.
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Claim. Every seven-coloring of the edges of has eight vertices whose induced edges miss a color, and every eight-coloring of the edges of has nine vertices whose induced edges miss a color: the cases and of Problem 617. This is Theorem 1.1 (Theorems 3.1 and 5.1 for the two cases) of Robert Sneiderman, The seven- and eight-color cases of an Erdős–Gyárfás balanced-coloring problem, a 21-page preprint added to the author's repository on 2026-07-20 and posted to the site's proof-claim tab the same day; its digest is on its card. The common reduction uses all colors at once: in a hypothetical balanced coloring every color graph has independence number at most , every -set spans at most edges of one color, and the other color classes partition the complement, which gives an induced-density estimate stronger than the one-color cap; a least color has at most edges and a bounded minimum degree, and a colored core ladder excludes large sets of small independence and clique number. The seven-color case closes with a direct exhaustive lemma on weighted graphs with seven vertices; the eight-color case with an extremal argument and finite instances, each reconstructed independently and checked by LRAT certificates. The preprint says the results await external review and settle nothing for arbitrary .
Submission note. Posted to erdosproblems.com as a proof claim by Robert Sneiderman (account RobSneiderman) on 20 July 2026, giving "GPT 5.6" as the AI used:
We record computer-assisted proofs of two fixed cases of a problem of Erdős and Gyárfás. Every seven-coloring of the edges of K50 has eight vertices whose induced edges omit a color, and every eight-coloring of the edges of K65 has nine vertices whose induced edges omit a color. The seven-color proof uses a direct exhaustive lemma on weighted graphs with seven vertices. The eight-color proof uses a human full-color extremal argument together with 862 independently reconstructed and LRAT-checked finite instances. The accompanying repository contains the source, semantic verifiers, manifests, replay script, and proof artifacts. These results are being circulated for independent checking and have not yet received external mathematical review. Neither result settles the problem for arbitrary r.
Covers. The fixed cases and only; the preprint disclaims , arbitrary and any Lean formalization.
Depends on. Nothing in this wiki.
Reported gap. A review posted on the site by Nick Winter on 31 July 2026
(as a comment on the claimant's claim, naming this manuscript's source
r7-r8/main.tex at line 403 and the source at line 299) reports an
inference the two manuscripts share: at they conclude from the old
parts having total order that every old part has order exactly , which
the review says does not follow on its own. Its three-step repair: a part with
more than vertices already puts a forbidden in its target
clique; otherwise every part has at most vertices and the total
forces exactly ; only then does the manuscript's exceptional-vertex
argument apply. The review also restricts the eight-set-cap sentence at line
642 to the branch, says no floor, recursive state, certificate or
margin changes, and passes the manuscript once the repair is written in, at
the repository's commit of 25 July 2026, the version linked above, which
therefore does not contain the repair. The review is by Winter's GPT-5.6 Sol
and Claude Fable 5 agents at screening depth (the enumeration verified
in full, the inventory hash-checked and spot-replayed), says it is not
peer review and names no human referee, so it is no acceptance evidence.
Standing. Claimed. Unrefereed and computer-assisted, with GPT 5.6 named in the proof-claim entry as the system used; the repository's replay of the enumeration and of the reconstructions and certificates is the author's own; the site's label is FALSIFIABLE, and the claim itself carries no comments. A partial claim derives nothing for the problem's standing.