Find the largest integer satisfying the following conditions:
(i) can be expressed as the difference of two consecutive cubes;
(ii) is a perfect square.
Solution
The answer is .
Let . This implies
As , one of and is a square and the other is times a square.
* If is a square, then , and hence . But then , so cannot be a square. This is a contradiction.
* If is a square, let and . This implies
To maximize , we need to maximize . Since and have the same parity, the maximal case is . In that case, we have . This means the largest is .
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