MHB What is the minimum number of handshakes at a party with eight people?

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    2015
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At a party with eight people, including four couples, handshakes occur under specific rules: no one shakes hands with their spouse or themselves, and everyone shakes at least one hand. Each person, except possibly the hostess, reports a different number of handshakes. The minimum number of handshakes the hostess could have is determined by the unique responses given by the other guests. The solution reveals that the hostess must have shaken hands with all six other guests, resulting in a total of six handshakes. This scenario highlights the combinatorial nature of the problem and the constraints imposed by the social dynamics at the party.
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Here is this week's problem:

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Eight total people (four couples), including the host and hostess, arrive at a party, and a number of handshakes occur. No one shakes hands with their own spouse or with themselves, and everyone shakes at least one hand. The host asks the others how many hands they shook, and everyone (except possibly the hostess) gives a different answer. The hostess is the last to answer; what is the smallest possible number of hands she shook?

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Remember to read the http://www.mathhelpboards.com/showthread.php?772-Problem-of-the-Week-%28POTW%29-Procedure-and-Guidelines to find out how to http://www.mathhelpboards.com/forms.php?do=form&fid=2!
 
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Congratulations to Fallen Angel for a correct solution, which you can read below:

At first, we got 6 different answer (from the couples that aren't host), which is a number from 1 to 6 (bacause no one can shake itself or it's couple and everybody shakes at least once), so all this numbers are someone's answer.

Claim: Hostess just need to shake once.

Proof:

Let $\{m_1,m_2,m_3,f_1,f_2,f_3,\text{host},\text{hostess}\}$ be the vertex of a graph where $m_i-f_i$ is a couple, then we can got the following edges (that means shaking hands).

$\{(\text{host},m_1),(\text{host},m_2),(\text{host},m_3),(\text{host},f_3),(m_1,m_2),(m_1,m_3),(m_1,\text{hostess}),(m_1,f_3),(m_1,f_2),(m_2,m_3),(m_2,f_3),(m_2,f_1),(m_3,f_2)\}$

and we are done because $\deg(m_i)=7-i$, $\deg(f_{i})=i$, $\deg(\text{host})=4$ and $\deg(\text{hostess})=1$.
 

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