Let be the largest integer that equals the product of its units digit and the sum of its digits, and let be the largest integer that equals the product of its leading digit and the sum of its digits.
Find .
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A quick overview of a solution ....
Clearly m = 1 works, so now look at two-digit integers a b .
We require that b ∗ ( a + b ) = 1 0 a + b ⟹ b ∗ ( a + b − 1 ) = 1 0 a . Testing out combinations of a , b gives us 4 5 and 2 4 as the only possible numbers, and so 4 5 is the largest such two-digit number. With 3 -digit numbers a b c the largest possible product is 9 ∗ 2 7 = 2 4 3 , so we only need to look at the cases where a = 1 and a = 2 . Thus we need to look for any solutions to
c ∗ ( b + c ) = 1 0 ∗ ( b + 1 0 ) and c ∗ ( b + c + 1 ) = 1 0 ∗ ( b + 2 0 ) ,
where each of b and c are between 0 and 9 inclusive.
There are no such solutions to either equation.
Since 9 ∗ 3 6 = 3 2 4 there can be no such 4 -digit integers, and in fact there can be no k -digit integers, k ≥ 4 , that meet the requirements. Thus m = 4 5 .
Looking now for n , a similar approach reveals that 4 8 is the largest 2 -digit integer. Now again since 9 ∗ 2 7 = 2 4 3 , the largest potential 3 -digit integer will have a leading digit of 2 , yielding a largest possible product of the leading digit and the sum of the digits of 2 ∗ ( 2 + 3 + 9 ) = 2 8 , i.e., a two-digit number.
Thus n = 4 8 , and so n − m = 4 8 − 4 5 = 3 .