2016 IMO Problems/Problem 2

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Find all integers $n$ for which each cell of $n \times n$ table can be filled with one of the letters $I,M$ and $O$ in such a way that:

  • in each row and each column, one third of the entries are $I$, one third are $M$ and one third are $O$; and
  • in any diagonal, if the number of entries on the diagonal is a multiple of three, then one third of the entries are $I$, one third are $M$ and one third are $O$.

Note. The rows and columns of an $n \times n$ table are each labelled $1$ to $n$ in a natural order. Thus each cell corresponds to a pair of positive integer $(i,j)$ with $1 \le i,j \le n$. For $n>1$, the table has $4n-2$ diagonals of two types. A diagonal of first type consists all cells $(i,j)$ for which $i+j$ is a constant, and the diagonal of this second type consists all cells $(i,j)$ for which $i-j$ is constant.