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Dicey numbers

I THREW a small number of standard dice and noted that the grand total of spots on the tops was a perfect square. Then I put the dice in a row in increasing order of their tops and wrote down the large number so formed (for example, 12224…).

Then I repeated the exercise with double the number of dice. Again the total number of spots was a perfect square, and again I wrote down the number formed by the tops in increasing order. It turned out that the second number I wrote down was the square of…

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