What is the smallest prime p>3 dividing the (right) concatenation of all numbers <=p in base 3?

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Jianing Song

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Apr 26, 2026, 5:17:07 AMApr 26
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Hello everyone,
In each base b, I was interested in finding the smallest nontrivial p such that p divides the (right) concatenation of all numbers <=p in base b. By "nontrivial" I mean p not dividing b(b-1): divisors d of b or odd divisors d of b-1 trivially satisfy that they divide that concatenation. So for example, in base 10 the answer is 8167 (see A072712).

Now I am coping M. F. Hasler's program in A029455 to give one searching for the smallest prime p:
(PARI) a(base) = c=0; for(d=1, oo, for(n=d, -1+d*=base, c=c*d+n; if(isprime(n) && (base*(base-1))%n!=0 && c%n==0, return(n))); d--)
so we can calculate starting from base 2:
3, ?, 2281, 23, 103, 61, 13, 47, 8167, 281, 29, ?, 19, 6829, 83, 809, 208631, 47, 71, 79, ?, ?, ...
The values corresponding to bases 3, 13, 22, 23 are marked with "?".

But if the answer in same b is very large then it should be very hard to find: For each n the concatenation of 1 through n has O(n log n) digits, so finding its remainder modulo n requires O(n (log n)^2) bit operations. Taking the sum of n means that to calculate terms up to n, the time complexity is O(n^2 (log n)^2). I guess some optimizations may be applied, but still we face something at the order of n^2.

Here we are in the situation of finding Wieferich primes or k-Wall-Sun-Sun primes: we conjecture that there are infinitely many (because we can't give a proof of the contrary), we know at most a handful of terms in each base, and in some bases (like 1-Wall-Sun-Sun) we don't know any result at all.

So I was wondering if everyone is interested in finding the smallest nontrivial p dividing the concatenation of all numbers <=p in base 3? Or in other bases? Perhaps someone have studied this sequence in the litterature before (and proved that such primes do not exist)? Thank you for your attention, for your time and any help in advance! :)

Jianing Song

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Apr 26, 2026, 5:18:56 AMApr 26
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I forgot to say that for base 3 such prime must be at least 10^7; see b-file of A029448.

Jianing Song <jianing...@gmail.com> 于2026年4月26日周日 17:17写道:
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Jack Brennen

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Apr 26, 2026, 11:01:01 AMApr 26
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I believe that the ? for base 13 can be replaced with 6569023.  I'd want to double-check it first to make sure there are no smaller solutions, but that's at least an upper bound.


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Jianing Song

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Apr 26, 2026, 12:17:50 PMApr 26
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That's nice, thanks for your calculation!

Michael Branicky

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Apr 26, 2026, 4:07:31 PMApr 26
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I confirm Jack's base 13 = 6569023  
and compute base 23 as 1363221317 

Jianing Song

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Apr 27, 2026, 6:03:33 AMApr 27
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Wow, remarkable! So I guess the base 3 case is very resisting, right?

Michael Branicky

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May 2, 2026, 7:17:44 AM (12 days ago) May 2
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For base 3, I obtained 37347358781

Regards,
Michael

Jianing Song

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May 2, 2026, 9:46:11 AM (12 days ago) May 2
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Wow that's ready to make it fits into a new OEIS sequence now! Would you like to share your algorithm of finding this? Or do you have any remark for the sequence? Thanks really a lot to your contribution!
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