Suppose is a positive integer of 3 distinct non-zero digits. Let be the greatest common divisor of the 6 numbers obtained by permuting the digits of . Determine the maximum possible value that can take.
Solution
[18]
First, let us show that cannot exceed for any . Denote by the digits of , where we assume . Both and are numbers obtained by permuting the digits of . Hence is a divisor of . Similarly, we get that is a divisor of and of . If we set , , , then are positive integers not exceeding , and satisfy . If we denote by the greatest common divisor of then is a divisor of .
(1) If , there exists at most number less than or equal to divisible by , and we get a contradiction to the fact that . So, is impossible.
(2) If , then and are the only positive integers not bigger than and divisible by , so we must have . We then have and .
(3) If , then and are the only positive integers not bigger than and divisible by , so we must have . Then must be or or and the value of is , , , respectively.
(4) If , then since divides , we must have .
Thus we have shown that . On the other hand if , then and this shows that is the maximum possible value for .