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 and , every number less than or equal to divides at least one of the numbers considered, and therefore does not work. Similarly, given , divides exactly two numbers between and but at most one of them can fall among the numbers that do not appear on the clock (that is, the numbers from to ) because these are : hence certainly divides one of the numbers that appear on the clock. We have thus ruled out all . On the other hand, a direct computation gives us that , , and therefore these are not acceptable, while we have , and .
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