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Question 265927: Find the smallest positive integer n such that the product of n and 999 does not contain the digit 9.
Answer by Edwin McCravy(20060) (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
999*1=999
999*2=1998
999*3=2997
999*4=3996
999*5=4995
999*6=5994
999*7=6993
999*8=7992
999*9=8991
So n cannot be a 1 digit number
since every product of a positive digit and 999
is of the form X99Y, where Y is a positive digit.
Let's see if it can be a 2-digit number:
Then the multiplication would look like this
999
AB
C99D
E99F
GHIJD
B cannot be 0 because the result would only amount to annexing
a 0 onto one of those multiples of 999 by a single digit listed above.
F cannot be 0 since A cannot be 0. Now regardless of what positive
digit F is, we will carry a 1 to the next column which would make I
be 9.
So n cannot be a 2-digit number.
Let's see if n can be a 3-digit number:
999
ABC
D99E
F99G
H99I
JKLMNE
C cannot be 0 because that would amount
to annexing a 0 onto a multiple of 999
by a two-digit number and we have already
ruled those out.
C cannot be 1, for then E would be 9.
So the smallest digit we can try for C is therefore 2, so
then we would have:
999
AB2
1998
F99G
H99I
JKLMN8
So far so good. B can't be 0 for that would make G be 0,
and therefore N would be 9. So the smallest digit we can try
for B is 1. That gives:
999
A12
1998
999
H99I
JKLM88
So far so good. The smallest digit we can try
for A is also 1. That gives:
999
112
1998
999
999
111888
Eureka! That's it! So the smallest possible value
for n is n=112.
Edwin
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