“I’m having trouble understanding why we can’t just fix n=2 in your proof. Then at each iteration we bisect the interval, so we wouldn’t be using the “full power” of the 1-D Sperner’s lemma (we would just be using something close to the base case).”—You’re right, you can prove this without using the full power of Sperner’s lemma. I think it becomes more useful for the multi-dimensional case.
“I’m having trouble understanding why we can’t just fix n=2 in your proof. Then at each iteration we bisect the interval, so we wouldn’t be using the “full power” of the 1-D Sperner’s lemma (we would just be using something close to the base case).”—You’re right, you can prove this without using the full power of Sperner’s lemma. I think it becomes more useful for the multi-dimensional case.