A complete solution to the existence and nonexistence of Knut Vik designs and orthogonal Knut Vik designs

Hedayat and Federer (Ann. of Statist.3 (1975), 445–447) proved that Knut Vik designs do not exist for all even orders. They gave a simple algorithm for the construction of such designs for all other orders, except when the order of the design is divisible by 3. The existence of Knut Vik designs of orders divisible by 3 was left unsolved by these authors. It is shown here that Knut Vik designs do not also exist for all orders divisible by 3. An easy algorithm based on a result of Euler is provided for the construction of orthogonal Knut Vik designs for all orders not divisible by 2 or 3. Therefore, we can say that Knut Vik designs and orthogonal Knut Vik designs of order n exist if and only if n is not divisible by 2 or 3. The results are based on the concepts of a super diagonal and parallel super diagonals in an n × n array, which have been introduced and studied for the first time here. Other relevant results are also given.