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Number theory Difficulty 4.3 AIME Prove it Ireland

The four digit number ABCDABCD has the property that
ABCD=A×BCD+ABC×D. ABCD = A \times BCD + ABC \times D.
What is the smallest possible value of ABCDABCD?

Solution

To find the smallest number, we try A=1A = 1. The given equation becomes 1BCD=BCD+1BC×D1BCD = BCD + 1BC \times D, hence 1000=1BC×D1000 = 1BC \times D. This means that DD is a divisor of 1000=23×531000 = 2^3 \times 5^3 and so D{1,2,4,5,8}D \in \{1, 2, 4, 5, 8\}, because DD is a digit. On the other hand, 1BC<2001BC < 200 implies that 1000<200×D1000 < 200 \times D, and so D>5D > 5. Therefore we need to have D=8D = 8 to find a solution. Because 1000/8=1251000/8 = 125 we now see that there is a solution with B=2B = 2 and C=5C = 5. Hence the smallest possible value is 12581258.

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