Let be a three-digit integer such that the difference between any two positive integer factors of is divisible by 3 . Let denote the number of positive integers which divide . Find the maximum possible value of .
Solution
We first note that all the prime factors of must be 1 modulo 3 (and thus 1 modulo 6 ). The smallest primes with this property are Since , the number can have at most 3 prime factors (including repeats). Since , the most factors can have is 6 . Consider the number , which has 6 factors. For this choice of . For another to do better, it must have at least 6 factors, for otherwise, . It is easy to verify that is the greatest number with 6 prime factors satisfying our conditions, so the answer must be 5586 .
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