HMMT — Spider Web n Leaves Circle Hamiltonian Path
1925SpecialistGraph TheoryCombinatorics
12th Annual Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament
A spider is making a web between $n > 1$ distinct leaves which are equally spaced around a circle. He chooses a leaf to start at, and to make the base layer he travels to each leaf one at a time, making a straight line of silk between each consecutive pair of leaves, such that no two of the lines of silk cross each other and he visits every leaf exactly once. In how many ways can the spider make the base layer of the web? Express your answer in terms of $n$.