Maths Olympiad Prep

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Number theory Difficulty 5.7 AIME, harder Prove it Italy

Consider a digital clock and the numbers formed by the four digits (hours and minutes): 10:45 will indicate the number 1045. What is the smallest positive integer that does not divide any of the numbers that appear between 11:00 and 12:59?

Solution

among the numbers between 11001100 and 11591159, every number nn less than or equal to 6060 divides at least one of the numbers considered, and therefore does not work. Similarly, given 60n8060 \leq n \leq 80, nn divides exactly two numbers between 11001100 and 12591259 but at most one of them can fall among the numbers that do not appear on the clock (that is, the numbers from 11601160 to 119119) because these are 4040: hence nn certainly divides one of the numbers that appear on the clock. We have thus ruled out all n80n \leq 80. On the other hand, a direct computation gives us that 81×15=121581 \times 15=1215, 82×15=123082 \times 15=1230, 83×15=124583 \times 15=1245 and therefore these nn are not acceptable, while we have 84×13=1092<110084 \times 13=1092<1100, 84×14=1176>115984 \times 14=1176>1159 and 84×15=1260>125984 \times 15=1260>1259.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement translated into English from it; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.