Problem:
Ten positive integers are arranged around a circle. Each number is one more than the greatest common divisor of its two neighbors. What is the sum of the ten numbers?
Problem:
Ten positive integers are arranged around a circle. Each number is one more than the greatest common divisor of its two neighbors. What is the sum of the ten numbers?
Solution:
First note that all the integers must be at least , because the greatest common divisor of any two positive integers is at least . Let be the largest integer in the circle. The greatest common divisor of its two neighbors is . Therefore, each of the two neighbors is at least but at most , so since for , they must both be equal to .
Let be one of the numbers on the other side of from . Then . Since , only for or .
If , each number must be or , and it is easy to check that there is no solution.
If , then it is again not hard to find that there is a unique solution up to rotation, namely . The only possible sum is therefore .