Ten teams play in a regular season of basketball, where each team plays each other team once and only once. Any team that wins seven or more games will make it to the playoffs. What is the maximum number of teams that can make it to the playoffs?
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There will be a total of ( 2 1 0 ) = 4 5 regular season games. If we want the most teams to win seven games, we can start with the floor when 4 5 is divided by 7 . This is 6 . However, if 6 teams win 7 games each, that leaves 3 wins among 4 teams. With these 4 teams alone, there must be ( 2 4 ) = 6 wins, so this is not possible. Now, we can try 5 teams. This leaves 1 0 more wins among 5 teams. As ( 2 5 ) = 1 0 , this works. Thus, we can have 5 teams that can make the playoffs.