Three-coloring triangle-free graphs on surfaces I. Extending a coloring to a disk with one triangle

Abstract

Let G be a plane graph with exactly one triangle T and all other cycles of length at least 5, and let C be a facial cycle of G of length at most six. We prove that a 3-coloring of C does not extend to a 3-coloring of G if and only if C has length exactly six and there is a color x such that either G has an edge joining two vertices of C colored x, or T is disjoint from C and every vertex of T is adjacent to a vertex of C colored x. This is a lemma to be used in a future paper of this series.

18 pages, 2 figures; v3: further reviewer remarks incorporated