Maths Olympiad Prep

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Algebra Difficulty 6.9 National Olympiad Prove it Italy

Problem:

Let nn be the smallest positive integer with 4 digits greater than or equal to 2016 that has the following property: there exists a positive integer SS such that

S=a+b+c+d+S S=\sqrt{a+\sqrt{b+\sqrt{c+\sqrt{d+S}}}}

where a,b,c,da, b, c, d are, in order, the thousands, hundreds, tens and units digit of nn. What is the value of nn?

Solution

Solution:

The answer is 2167. First of all, 2167 satisfies the required property with S=2S=2: indeed
2+1+6+7+2=2+1+6+9=2+1+9=2+4=4=2 \sqrt{2+\sqrt{1+\sqrt{6+\sqrt{7+2}}}}=\sqrt{2+\sqrt{1+\sqrt{6+\sqrt{9}}}}=\sqrt{2+\sqrt{1+\sqrt{9}}}=\sqrt{2+\sqrt{4}}=\sqrt{4}=2
Let us now show that there are no integers nn between 2016 and 2166 that have this property. We begin by showing that SS must be less than 4. Indeed, if for contradiction we had S4S \geq 4, we would have
S(S1)>9S2>S+9S+dS>d+S S(S-1)>9 \Rightarrow S^{2}>S+9 \geq S+d \Rightarrow S>\sqrt{d+S}
similarly we would have S2>S+9>d+S+cS>c+d+SS^{2}>S+9>\sqrt{d+S}+c \Rightarrow S>\sqrt{c+\sqrt{d+S}}, and so on, until we reach the contradiction S>a+b+c+d+S=SS>\sqrt{a+\sqrt{b+\sqrt{c+\sqrt{d+S}}}}=S. Observe next that, since SS is an integer, all the arguments of the square roots must be perfect squares, and since we are looking for a number between 2016 and 2166 we must have a=2a=2 and b=0b=0 or b=1b=1. Moreover we have S>1S>1, because S>a1S>\sqrt{a} \geq 1, and from S3S \leq 3 we find d+S12d+S \leq 12, from which c+d+S<9+4=13c+\sqrt{d+S}<9+4=13; in the same way, all the arguments of the square roots are less than or equal to 12. In particular, 12b+c+d+S=S2a=S22\sqrt{12} \geq \sqrt{b+\sqrt{c+\sqrt{d+S}}}=S^{2}-a=S^{2}-2, from which we obtain S<3S<3, that is, S=2S=2. We then have 2d+S112 \leq d+S \leq 11, and the only two perfect squares in this interval are 4 and 9, which correspond to d=2d=2 and d=7d=7 respectively. Let us treat the two cases separately.

d=2. The same situation just seen for dd arises again for cc. If c=2c=2 we should have that b+2+2b+\sqrt{2+2} is a perfect square, but this is true neither for b=0b=0 nor for b=1b=1. If instead c=7,b+7+2c=7, b+\sqrt{7+2} is a perfect square for b=1b=1, which however leads us to 2172>21672172>2167.

d=7. In this case c+d+S=c+3c+\sqrt{d+S}=c+3 must be a perfect square between 3 and 12, from which c=1c=1 or c=6c=6. In the first case again b+2b+2 is not a perfect square for b=0,1b=0,1, while for c=6c=6 we obtain that b+3b+3 must be a square, which happens for b=1b=1 and leads to the solution 2167.

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