USR-2026-0074 · Mathematics

A six-colouring of 29 points nobody had built

B(6) ≥ 29: the edges of K_29 partition into six graphs each with independence number ≤ 6 — a balanced 6-colouring in which every 7 vertices see all six colours. Equivalently R_6^5(K_7) ≥ 30.

PROVISIONAL exact — witness-verified, no statistics involved re-run & confirmed 2026-08-09 (R0 — David Thompson's CI; independence pending)

First recorded movement on the r=6 case of Erdős problem 617 — the first r with no affine plane (Euler's 36 officers; Tarry 1900), so the classical construction behind every settled case (r=3,4,5,9, all prime powers) does not exist. Explicit witness colourings for K_26–K_29 are embedded in the claim script, which re-proves the theorem from scratch by enumerating every 7-subset (4,290,650 checks in total; 1,560,780 for K_29 alone). Construction: AG(2,5) direction-colouring plus up to four vertices whose stars satisfy a line-covering law — every colour-independent j-subset of new vertices must jointly contain j−1 full lines of that parallel class. Two independent routes (structural schema + SAT, and a joint-SAT climb) produced distinct witnesses at 28 and 29. Discovered 2026-08-09.

▶ Run this script in your browser — no account, nothing uploaded, 1.9s when the author ran it

Falsify-box — how to kill this claim

PASSED — 0 OF 4,290,650 any 7-subset of a witness found missing a colour (run the script)
NONE FOUND ACROSS NINE SOURCES; BUDDEN BOOK PENDING 2026-08-14 a prior publication establishing B(6) ≥ 29 (would demote novelty, not truth)

Verification record — every quoted number, re-run 2026-08-09

quantitymeasuredverdict
B(6) lower bound 29
subsets verified 4,290,650

Provenance

script: verify_b6_witnesses.py
script status: DETERMINISTIC
datasets:
re-run: 2026-08-09

Edges

RELATES → Erdős problem 617 (Erdős–Gyárfás 1999): no balanced r-colouring of K_{r²+1}; proven r=3,4; r=5×3 and r=9 claimed July 2026; r=6 untouched
CONTEXT → upper side open: B(6) ≤ 36 is the conjecture. K_30 sharpened 2026-08-09: the mixed-pair schema over an AG(2,5) interior is exhaustively refuted at k=5 (126 symmetry-canonical cubes, all UNSAT, 63-core cube-and-conquer, 0.13h) — so K_29 is the exact ceiling of this construction family, and any K_30 balanced 6-colouring requires a different interior. The free K_30 question remains open.

Status, honestly

witness-verified by exhaustive enumeration (the strongest verification on this site: the claim script IS the proof). Novelty checked against nine sources 2026-08-09 — Chung–Liu 1978, Jacobson 1982, Erdős–Gyárfás 1999, Harborth–Möller 1999 (via nine citing works), Munemasa–Shinohara, Budden 2017, the June-2026 s-chromatic survey, and the erdosproblems.com 617 page/forum/proof-claims — none touch the six-colour diagonal. Residual: Budden's book ships 2026-08-14; HM99 PDF read directly only via citing works.. This status was assigned by hand from the public re-run audit above — it is a judgement made from that evidence, not a number this site computed for itself. What cannot move it is authority: no vote, endorsement, or say-so, from anyone including the maintainer. Independent reproduction would move it; nothing else will.

§ Figures 1 from verify_b6_witnesses.py

What this claim's own script draws. These are David Thompson's committed outputs — the same plots the script regenerates on any machine that runs it. You can redraw them yourself below.

b6_construction.png 99.7 KB download
§ Reproduction verify_b6_witnesses.py

Two runs of the same script — mine, and one you can start right now. A match proves the result is reproducible; it is still R0 on this registry's independence rings — same code, so it cannot move a status. Only an outside run does that.

sha256 b868f7c2017a780ccffc6504… size 4631 B exit 0 runtime 1.94s env python 3.12.2 · numpy determinism byte-stable
A · Recorded David Thompson's machine ·
USR-2026-0074 — B(6) >= 29: exhaustive witness verification
================================================================
  K_26:   657,800 seven-subsets checked, 0 missing a colour -> OK   [witness sha256:651b449a0ecf1903]
  K_27:   888,030 seven-subsets checked, 0 missing a colour -> OK   [witness sha256:20043d219b4deafc]
  K_28: 1,184,040 seven-subsets checked, 0 missing a colour -> OK   [witness sha256:fc799be8e2f4a31b]
  K_29: 1,560,780 seven-subsets checked, 0 missing a colour -> OK   [witness sha256:215b3891679a1c3d]
================================================================
ALL WITNESSES VERIFIED: the edges of K_29 partition into six graphs
of independence number <= 6.  B(6) >= 29, i.e. R_6^5(K_7) >= 30.
B · Yours
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ledger 1 run · 1 reproduced · 0 unexpected · 1 platform (Chrome/macOS)
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