Find the largest element in the set of the smallest possible consecutive odd integers such that the sum of all the elements in is a non-zero perfect square.
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Let x be the smallest element of such a set S ; then we have s ∈ S ∑ s = i = 0 ∑ 1 2 5 x + 2 ∗ i = 1 2 6 x + 2 i = 0 ∑ 1 2 5 i = 1 2 6 x + 1 2 6 ⋅ 1 2 5 = 1 2 6 ( x + 1 2 5 ) . For this sum to be a perfect square, each of its prime factors must appear an even number of times in the prime factorization. So far we see the sum is divisible by 1 2 6 = 2 ⋅ 3 2 ⋅ 7 , so the smallest perfect square the sum could equal is 2 2 ⋅ 3 2 ⋅ 7 2 . To achieve this, we need the x + 1 2 5 term to provide additional powers of 2 and 7 so that their powers are even. In particular, since we are looking for the smallest such x , we choose x + 1 2 5 = 2 ⋅ 7 = 1 4 . From here we derive x = − 1 1 1 , and so the largest element of S is x + 2 ⋅ 1 2 5 = 1 3 9 .