Question 43
A word is a finite sequence of letters from some alphabet. A word is repetitive if it is a concatenation of at least two identical subwords (for example, $a b a b a b$ and $a b c a b c$ are repetitive, but $a b a b a$ and $a a b b$ are not). Prove that if a word has the property that swapping any two adjacent letters makes the word repetitive, then all its letters are identical. (Note that one may swap two adjacent identical letters, leaving a word unchanged.)