Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.
Updated
Claim. For every , a graph with vertices and edges contains a cycle and a further vertex adjacent to three vertices of the cycle, which answers the corrected Statement of Problem 916, the question for every , in the affirmative. The claimed result is the Theorem (p. 212) of C. Thomassen, A minimal condition implying a special -subdivision in a graph, Arch. Math. (Basel) 25 (1974), no. 1, 210--215: a graph with vertices and edges either has property , a cycle and a vertex not on it joined to at least three of its vertices (p. 211), or is a -cockade; in particular forces property . The paper states Erdős's 1967 suggestion as its purpose (p. 210) and proves it; since property survives adding edges, "at least edges" and the site's " edges" ask the same question. The theorem also makes the value exact: the cockades have edges and lack the configuration (Lemma 2, p. 211), and Dirac's graphs with edges have no subdivision of at all. The Corollary (p. 215) reproves Dirac's theorem of 1960, which the question strengthens.
Depends on. Nothing in this wiki; the argument is self-contained.
Acceptance. Refereed: Archiv der Mathematik (Crossref record accessed: volume 25, issue 1, pp. 210--215, issued December 1974; the day is the issue's nominal first day, used for this page's date). Reviewed: the site's curator (T. F. Bloom), independent of the author, labels the problem proved and names this paper as the proof, and Carmesin restates the theorem, without a range for , in a refereed and open-access paper (J. Combin. Theory Ser. B 161 (2023), p. 22, paged at related_results_p22). The source has a library source card. Read depth: the Introduction, the definition of property , Lemma 2, the Theorem and the Corollary; the proof (pp. 212--215, an induction on ) read for structure only, with no step checked. The acceptance recorded here rests on the publication, the restatement and the site's acceptance, not on a local review.
Formalization. The file src/latest/ErdosProblems/Erdos916.lean of
Alexeev's repository plby/lean-proofs, linked above at the repository's
head of 15 September 2026 and known here by its header and main theorem
only, declares itself a Lean formalization of this paper's result, naming
Carsten Thomassen as its informal author and the AI systems Codex and
GPT-5.6 Sol as its formal authors. Its theorem erdos_916 takes a finite
simple graph on at least four vertices with exactly edges and
concludes a cycle with a further vertex adjacent to three of its vertices
(HasWheelWitness), the problem's corrected Statement with the four-vertex
floor the site's wording lacks; the main file carries no #print axioms
line, and its 63 imported modules are not examined here. The site does not
cite it, and nothing was built, replayed or audited here, so the page lists
no formalized evidence.