Paper 3, Section I, I

Coding and Cryptography
Part II, 2020

Let NN and pp be very large positive integers with pp a prime and p>Np>N. The Chair of the Committee is able to inscribe pairs of very large integers on discs. The Chair wishes to inscribe a collection of discs in such a way that any Committee member who acquires rr of the discs and knows the prime pp can deduce the integer NN, but owning r1r-1 discs will give no information whatsoever. What strategy should the Chair follow?

[You may use without proof standard properties of the determinant of the r×rr \times r Vandermonde matrix.]