Find all positive integers such that equation
has a solution in integers and .
Solution
Answer: all odd numbers.
For there is a solution . For any odd number from the latter equality we can obtain the equality , which means that all odd satisfy the conditions of the problem.
If is even, . But the left side of this equality cannot be equal to 1 modulo 3, since the perfect squares are congruent to 0 or 1 modulo 3. Hence, there are no even numbers satisfying the conditions of the problem.
Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track
puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.