Is it a 4x4 Magic Square?

Logic Level 5

Find the sum of all possible integral values of n n where n 2 n \geq 2 , such that the numbers 1 1 to 16 16 can be written each in one square of a squared 4 × 4 4 \times 4 paper (no repetitions allowed), such that each of the 8 8 sums of the numbers in rows and columns is a multiple of n n , and all of these 8 8 multiples of n n are different from one other?

Inspiration .


The answer is 6.

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1 solution

Satyajit Mohanty
Jul 24, 2015

The only values are n = 2 n = 2 and 4 4 . To see this, note first that the sum of the 16 entries is k = 1 16 k = 136 \displaystyle \sum_{k=1}^{16} k = 136 . Let R i R_i and C i C_i denote the i t h i^{th} row sum and the i t h i^{th} column sum, respectively, where i = 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 i = 1, 2, 3, 4 . Then, by assumptions, R i = a i n , C i = b i n R_i = a_in, C_i = b_in where the 8 natural numbers a i a_i 's and b i b_i 's are all distinct.

Hence 2 × 136 = i = 1 4 ( R i + C i ) = n i = 1 4 ( a i + b i ) i = 1 8 k = 36 n 2 \times 136 = \displaystyle \sum_{i=1}^4 (R_i + C_i) = n \sum_{i=1}^4 (a_i + b_i) \geq \sum_{i=1}^8 k = 36n , and thus n 272 36 = 7 n \leq \lfloor \frac{272}{36} \rfloor =7 .

On the other hand, since n R i n | R_i for all i = 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 i = 1,2,3,4 , we have n i = 1 4 R i n | \displaystyle \sum_{i=1}^4 R_i or n 136 n | 136 . Since 136 = 2 3 × 17 136 = 2^3 \times 17 , we conclude that the only possible values of n n are n = 2 n = 2 or 4 4 .

So sum of all possible values of n = 6 n = \boxed{6} .

To complete the proof it clearly suffices to display a confi guration in which all the 4 row sums and the 4 column sums are distinct multiples of 4. The array shown in the figure below is one such confi guration since ( R 1 ; R 2 ; R 3 ; R 4 ) = ( 16 ; 20 ; 48 ; 52 ) (R1;R2;R3;R4) = (16; 20; 48; 52) and ( C 1 ; C 2 ; C 3 ; C 4 ) = ( 28 ; 32 ; 36 ; 40 ) (C1; C2; C3;C4) = (28; 32; 36; 40) .

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