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What is the size of the largest $A\subseteq \mathbb{R}^n$ such that there are only two distinct distances between elements of $A$? That is,\[\# \{ \lvert x-y\rvert : x\neq y\in A\} = 2.\]
Asked to Erdős by Coxeter. Erdős thought he could show that $\lvert A\rvert \leq n^{O(1)}$, but later discovered a mistake in his proof, and his proof only gave $\leq \exp(n^{1-o(1)})$.

Bannai, Bannai, and Stanton [BBS83] have proved that\[\lvert A\rvert \leq \binom{n+2}{2}.\]A simple proof of this upper bound was given by Petrov and Pohoata [PePo21].

Shengtong Zhang has observed that a simple lower bound of $\binom{n}{2}$ is given by considering all points with exactly two coordinates equal to $1$ and all others equal to $0$. In fact, since these points are on a hyperplane, a suitable projection gives an improved lower bound of $\binom{n+1}{2}$ (see the construction of Alweiss given in [503]).

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Additional thanks to: Ryan Alweiss, Jordan Ellenberg, Desmond Weisenberg, and Shengtong Zhang

When referring to this problem, please use the original sources of Erdős. If you wish to acknowledge this website, the recommended citation format is:

T. F. Bloom, Erdős Problem #502, https://www.erdosproblems.com/502, accessed 2026-01-16