This problem is not about a Golomb ruler. When dealing with Golomb rulers you care about uniqueness of lengths across all pairs, while in this problem you do n

This problem is not about a Golomb ruler. When dealing with Golomb rulers you care about uniqueness of lengths across all pairs, while in this problem you do not. If you had 4 oranges and 5 bowls, you could place them as follows: 1 1 0 1 1 This arrangement is not a Golomb ruler because the lengths 1 and 3 both occur more than once, but it is a valid solution to a smaller version of the problem in the OP.