Avoiding Arrays of Odd Order by Latin Squares

Abstract

We prove that there is a constantcsuch that, for each positive integerk, every (2k+ 1) × (2k+ 1) arrayAon the symbols (1,. . .,2k+1) with at mostc(2k+1) symbols in every cell, and each symbol repeated at mostc(2k+1) times in every row and column isavoidable; that is, there is a (2k+1) × (2k+1) Latin squareSon the symbols 1,. . .,2k+1 such that, for eachi,j∈ {1,. . .,2k+1}, the symbol in position (i,j) ofSdoes not appear in the corresponding cell inA. This settles the last open case of a conjecture by Häggkvist. Using this result, we also show that there is a constant ρ, such that, for any positive integern, if each cell in ann×narrayBis assigned a set ofm≤ ρnsymbols, where each set is chosen independently and uniformly at random from {1,. . .,n}, then the probability thatBis avoidable tends to 1 asn→ ∞.