Matt,
Spouse avoiding mixed doubles round robin tournaments do exist, unfortunately it can't be made to work for 6 couples
*.
If it is of any help, you can have a tournament for 5 couples where on each of 5 rounds a husband (H) and wife (W) pair sit it out or umpire.
Match 1 Match 2 Umpires
----------------- ----------------- -------
(H2 W4) v (H5 W3) (H3 W2) v (H4 W5) (H1 W1)
(H1 W4) v (H3 W5) (H4 W3) v (H5 W1) (H2 W2)
(H1 W2) v (H5 W4) (H2 W5) v (H4 W1) (H3 W3)
(H1 W5) v (H2 W3) (H3 W1) v (H5 W2) (H4 W4)
(H1 W3) v (H4 W2) (H2 W1) v (H3 W4) (H5 W5)
In the above, each husband partners the other wives exactly once, and opposes the other husbands and wifes exactly once.
Regards,
Ian.
Monday, September 5 2005, 09:01 am*This is related to Euler's conjecture and the 36 officers problem which has no solution.
Thanks Ian, you have made a hat trick of excellent answers -- Richard
