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 658 is yes. The claimed result is Theorem 1.1 of J. Solymosi, A note on a question of Erdős and Graham: for every real there is such that for every with contains a quadruple with integer , where . The grid differs from the site's by a translation, and an axis-parallel square is a square, so the theorem gives the site's conclusion in Graham's axis-parallel form and hence in the form allowing any square. The proof lifts to , where a square corresponds to a quadruple , , and builds a four-partite -uniform hypergraph whose vertices are the planes parallel to the four faces of that configuration, with an edge for each triple of planes from distinct classes that meets in a point of the lifted set. Four planes, one from each class, form a complete subgraph when each of their triples meets in the set: the four planes through one point give a degenerate one, and a non-degenerate one is exactly a quadruple. If the set contains no quadruple, every edge lies in exactly one complete subgraph, so the Frankl–Rödl theorem gives edges, while the hypergraph has edges; so forces a quadruple once is large. The paper states no bound: its Remark says that, because the Frankl–Rödl theorem rests on the regularity lemma, the method's bound on is at best of tower type. The statement, the one-page proof and the lifting are recorded on the source card; the argument takes the Frankl–Rödl theorem as an external premise (claims checked; proof not verified). The qualitative statement was known before, from the density Hales–Jewett theorem; the paper's contribution is a combinatorial argument whose bound, though not stated, is at best of tower type.
Depends on. Nothing in this wiki.
Acceptance. Refereed publication: Combin. Probab. Comput. 13 (2004), no. 2,
263--267, doi:10.1017/S0963548303005959; the Crossref record dates the issue to
March 2004, filled to the first of the month for this page's name (received 29
August 2002, revised 17 November 2002). Reviewed: the site's curator, Thomas
Bloom, labels the problem proved and credits the quantitative proof to Solymosi
in the problem page's commentary (accessed; empty proof-claim tab). A Lean 4
development, src/latest/ErdosProblems/Erdos658.lean of Boris Alexeev's
lean-proofs repository (1,532 lines at the pinned commit of 2026-09-15, first
added 2026-05-12), declares itself a formalization of this paper's Theorem 1.1:
its header names Solymosi, Frankl and Rödl as informal authors and Aristotle
(Harmonic) and John Jennings as formal authors, and its erdos_658 states the
theorem over Finset (ℤ × ℤ) and [N]^2 with d ≠ 0, applying Theorem_1_1
to frankl_roedl_theorem, a theorem of the repository's Util.FranklRodl
module derived from the repository's hypergraph removal development, not an
axiom. The file records #print axioms output propext, Classical.choice and
Quot.sound for Theorem_1_1 and Theorem_1_2 and no output for erdos_658.
It grew from two gists that John Jennings posted on the site's thread on
2026-04-20 and 2026-04-21, the first conditional on the Frankl–Rödl theorem and
the second stating it as an axiom; the formal-conjectures statement for the
problem (pinned above at its commit of 2026-10-06, accessed 2026-10-07) is
tagged solved and names line 1516 of the file, the theorem, as its formal proof.
This corpus has not built the development, so the page lists no formalized
evidence.