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From: td@alice.UUCP (Tom Duff)
Newsgroups: net.puzzle,net.math
Subject: Re: Another neat problem from Putnam Exam
Message-ID: <3056@alice.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 23-Oct-84 15:32:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: alice.3056
Posted: Tue Oct 23 15:32:54 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 24-Oct-84 04:03:12 EDT
References: <170@ihnet.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 9

(regarding my posted proof.)

Of course, a *real* mathematician wouldn't resort to writing a computer program
and proving that it terminates -- you wouldn't want to haul in all that Turing
baggage and recursive function theory for a simple geometry problem.  Instead,
he'd order all possible pairings by the sum of the lengths of the line segments,
assume that a minimal pairing has an intersection and prove a contradiction.

On the other hand, using my proof you can actually find the required pairing.