Suppose , and are pairwise distinct positive perfect squares such that . Compute the smallest possible value of .
Solution
Note that if and are divisible by more than one distinct prime, then we can just take the prime powers of a specific prime. Thus, assume and are powers of a prime . Assume and . Then . Because and are squares, the ratio of to is a square, so assume and . We can't take and , but we instead can take and . It can be checked that other values of and are too big. This gives , which gives a sum of 305. If and are powers of 9 , then , which is already too big. Thus, 305 is optimal.
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