Shook hands, but the same pair of players did not shake hands. After the game, a male player asked each player about the number of handshakes, and each person's response was different. How many people did the female partner of this male player shake hands with?
Parse 48 contestants are represented by 48 vertices $v, v_{0}, v_{1}, \cdots, v_{46}$, where $v$ represents the male contestant. Two people who have shaken hands are connected by an edge between their corresponding vertices, forming graph $G$. In $G$, $d\left(v_{i}\right) \leqslant 46$, $i=0,1,2, \cdots, 46$. Furthermore, when $i \neq j$, $d\left(v_{i}\right) \neq d\left(v_{i}\right)$. Therefore, except for vertex $v$, the degrees of the other vertices are
$$
0,1,2, \cdots, 45,46 \text {. }
$$

Assume $d\left(v_{i}\right)=i, i=0,1,2, \cdots, 46$. For vertex $v_{46}$, it is only not adjacent to vertex $v_{0}$, so $v_{46}$ and $v_{0}$ are partners. Remove vertices $v_{0}$ and $v_{46}$, as well as the edges adjacent to them, from $G$ to get graph $G_{1}$. In $G_{1}$, except for $v$, the degrees of all vertices are still different, and each degree is reduced by 1. Similarly, $v_{45}$ and $v_{1}$ are partners. Proceeding in this manner, we get that $v_{44}$ and $v_{2}$, ..., $v_{24}$ and $v_{22}$ are partners. Thus, $v_{23}$ and $v$ are partners. Therefore, the female partner of the male contestant shook hands 23 times.

Comment: If 24 is changed to 34, and "male and female partners" is changed to "team leader and deputy leader," this becomes a problem from the 26th International Mathematical Olympiad. Changing 24 to 16 and "male and female partners" to "two football teams, A and B," it becomes the third problem of the second round of the 1985 National High School Mathematics Competition.