In the "Huh, that's neat ... I guess" category of number theory, the preamble to this week's Riddler Classic notes that the current number of states satisfies that N is double a square and that N+1 is a centered pentagonal number.
After 50, what is the next integer N with these properties?
After looking up the definition of a centered pentagonal number, it appears that they are of the form 1+n∑k=15k=1+5n(n+1)2. So the question states find the minimal N such that there exists integers n and m with N=2n2andN+1=5m(m+1)2+1. In particular, then we would have m2+m−45n2=0 for some integers m,n∈N. Solving for m in terms of n we get m=−1±√1+165n22. In order for m to be an integer we would need √1+165n2 to be an odd integer, so in particular, we require that 5∣n.
So we can brute force check whether the conditions hold for each multiple of 5, until arriving at n=90, which gives √1+165n2=161 and a grand total of N=2(90)2=16,200.
This seems like either we would need much bigger flags, or much smaller states to accommodate a flag with those specifications. And at what point on our walk from 51-ish states to 16,200 would we reconsider the convention of only having 13 stripes for the original colonies?
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