[Math] Prove using Pigeon Hole principle.

combinatoricspigeonhole-principle

A chess master who has 11 weeks to prepare for a tournament decides
to play at least one game every day but, to avoid tiring himself, he decides not to play
more than 12 games during any calendar week. Show that there exists a succession of
(consecutive) days during which the chess master will have played exactly 21 games.

I am not able to understand how to use pigeon hole principle here.
What is the intuition for using pigeon hole principle here?

Best Answer

It's a bit tricky to see Pigeon Hole Principle. Here we note that the total game play is not to exceed $11\times 12=132$ games. Now, if we denote $s_i$ to be the total games played after the $i$-th day. Then look at the sequence of $\color{red}{154}$ numbers: $$s_1,s_2,\dots, s_{77}, s_{1}+21,\dots, s_{76}+21,s_{77}+21$$ Now these are the "pigeons" whereas their values are "holes". Clearly, the maximal value (i.e. the number of holes) is $132+21=\color{red}{153}$.