Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.
Updated
Claim. The answer to Problem 1018 is yes: for every there is a constant such that every graph on vertices with at least edges contains a non-planar subgraph on at most vertices once is large. The claimed result is A. Kostochka and L. Pyber, Small topological complete subgraphs of "dense" graphs, Combinatorica 8 (1988), no. 1, 83--86 (received 2 October 1985, revised 15 September 1986; issued March 1988, whose nominal first day is this page's date), filed on its card (no file held). Its Theorem (p. 83), in the corpus's words: for every and , every graph with vertices and edges contains a subdivision of on at most vertices. The proof (p. 85) starts from a graph with at least edges, which is at most , so the theorem holds with "at least" in place of exactly that many edges, as the abstract states it; the logarithm's base is , read off the proof of Lemma 1.1 (a filing observation on the result page, the paper naming no base). The introduction (p. 83) states Erdős's question of 1971 (item 12) and presents the theorem as its answer; a Remark there says that girth results force the optimal bound to be at least of order , and the note added in proof (p. 85) reports Szemerédi's view that this order is probably attainable.
How the printed theorem reaches the site's question. A conversion made in this corpus, not in the paper: take and apply the theorem with for . A graph on vertices with at least edges has at least edges once , and then contains a subdivided on at most vertices; a subdivision of is non-planar by Kuratowski's theorem. So works for all , an explicit form of the site's bound. The claim's value is proved, the question being answered in the affirmative; SOLVED is the site's label. The conversion is elementary and carries no independent review. Jiang (J. Graph Theory 67 (2011), 139--152; not held) later removed the logarithm and made the subdivision paths uniformly short, as Janzer reports; that sharpening is second-hand on this page and not part of this claim.
Depends on. Nothing in this wiki; the paper's own statement and the conversion above are the whole argument.
Acceptance. Refereed publication in Combinatorica (Crossref record:
volume 8, issue 1, pp. 83--86, issued March 1988), which is the
refereed evidence. The reviewed evidence is documented acceptance by a
named expert and by the site's curator: Janzer, The extremal number of
longer subdivisions, Bull. London Math. Soc. 53 (2021), 108--118
(refereed; its arXiv copy filed on its
card),
opens by crediting Kostochka and Pyber with answering Erdős's question on
planar subgraphs through this theorem, stated with the same constants, and calls
it the first result giving a subdivided of bounded size; and the site's
curator, Thomas Bloom, who took no part in the paper, labels the problem SOLVED
and credits the paper with a bounded subdivision of , the community
database agreeing (solved as of its last update of 12 December 2025, and on
2026-10-07 solved (Lean), with a last update of 16 September 2026, through the
second formalization below). The thread's first pointer (13 September 2025) was
to Janzer's paper, from which the curator traced the earlier solution. Read
depth: the Theorem, the abstract, Erdős's question as the paper states it and
the Notation (p. 83) are checked clause by clause; the lemmas (p. 84) and the
proof (p. 85) are read for structure only, with a sign misprint in the printed
exponents of Lemma 1.1 recorded on the card and not resolved; nothing is
independently reviewed.
Formalizations. Two Lean developments declare themselves formalizations
of this result and are linked above; neither was built or audited in this
corpus, so the evidence stays reviewed and refereed with no
formalized. (1) The file src/latest/ErdosProblems/Erdos1018.lean of
Boris Alexeev's repository plby/lean-proofs (1,650 lines at the pinned
commit of 2026-09-15, with four sibling modules under
ErdosProblems/Erdos1018/ and the repository's record page
ErdosProblems/Erdos1018.md as the record link; first committed 17
August 2026; headed leanprover/lean4:v4.33.0 mathlib v4.33.0) declares
itself "a Lean formalization of a solution to Erdős Problem 1018", names
Alexandr Kostochka and László Pyber as informal authors and Codex and
GPT-5.6 Sol as formal authors, and proves erdos_1018: for every real
there are naturals and such that every
SimpleGraph (Fin n) with and at least edges
(Real.rpow, edges counted by edgeSet.ncard) has a subgraph on at most
vertices that is non-planar, where IsNonplanar is defined as
containing a subdivision of or of (the Kuratowski
characterization taken as the definition); its header says the proof
obtains a bounded-order subdivision of , as the paper does. The file
contains no sorry, axiom or native_decide. (2) Collin Yuanjie
Ren's submission JSP-000848 in the repository CollinYuanjieRen/awards
(commit of 16 September 2026, linked above) credits Kostochka and Pyber
with the underlying theorem, reuses the five files of Alexeev's proof,
which its README credits to Codex and GPT-5.6 Sol, and the Apache-licensed
Schoenflies development of Álvaro Begué, and adds the ordinary topological
conclusion: its root theorem
Erdos1018Topological.erdos_1018_ordinary_nonplanarity
(MerLeanExperiment/Goal.lean) has the same quantifiers and hypotheses and
concludes that the bounded subgraph admits no crossing-free plane drawing
(¬ Nonempty (PlanarListColoring.PlaneDrawing S.coe)), through a drawing
of and the Euler formula. The README names no AI system for the
added part; the community database's note calls the contribution
AI-assisted and, on 2026-10-07, lists it as the problem's Lean formal
status (status "solved (Lean)", with a last update of 16 September 2026).
Neither development is built, replayed or kernel-checked in this corpus,
and no outside examination of either is published, so the page lists no
formalized evidence. Formal-conjectures held no statement of the problem
on 2026-10-07.