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Here is the problem:

If eggs are counted in pairs one will remain, if counted in threes two will remain, if counted in fours three will remain, if counted in fives four will remain, if counted in sixes five will remain, if counted in sevens nothing will remain. How many eggs were there?

I framed equations using Euclid's lemma: $a=b×q+r$, $a=2×q+1$ etc. But I couldn't arrive at the solution

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I assume your question is asking:

Find $x$ such that \begin{align*} x &\equiv 1 \pmod 2\\ &\equiv 2 \pmod 3\\ &\equiv 3 \pmod 4\\ &\equiv 4 \pmod 5\\ &\equiv 5 \pmod 6\\ &\equiv 0 \pmod 7 \end{align*}

Now, this is really actually quite a unique question in that while you certainly could use the CRT, there is a trick that you can use to solve this specific question much faster!

Suppose instead that our question is asking

Find $x$ such that \begin{align*} x &\equiv 1 \pmod 2\\ &\equiv 2 \pmod 3. \end{align*}

Because $x$ is one less than $2$ & $3$, we find $x$ to be one less than lcm$(2, 3) = 5$, which we can see is $1 \pmod 2$ and $2 \pmod 3$. This will be true for however many congruences we have, so long as $x$ is one less than the modulus (can you prove this?).

Thus, for our original problem, we can do the same thing. So, we find that lcm$(2, 3, 4, 5, 6) = 60$ which yields the answer $60 - 1 = 59$.

However, we also need this number to be divisible by $7$, so we can take multiples of our lcm$(2, 3, 4, 5, 6) = 60$ and check values from there.

The next multiple of $60$ is $120$ which yields the solution $119$, which is in fact divisible by $7$!!

  • Please strive not to post more (dupe) answers to dupes of FAQs, cf. recent site policy announcement here. – Bill Dubuque Feb 25 '23 at 00:19
  • @BillDubuque the only reason you marked this as a duplicate is because I asked it… You had 8 years to mark it as a duplicate and you choose the exact day I answered it… – Clyde Kertzer Feb 25 '23 at 02:40
  • I marked it as a dupe because it appeared in the active questions list a few horus ago, and I know this is a FAQ. It has nothing at all to do with who asked or answered it. It seems you are answering many old questions - most of which are (by now) dupes. – Bill Dubuque Feb 25 '23 at 03:24
  • Btw, presuming that's your downvote on my answer in the dupe - be aware that users who cast vengeful downvotes on users involved in moderation have often been suspended for such. – Bill Dubuque Feb 25 '23 at 03:27
  • Unfortunately I am not allowed to reverse my vote for some reason. Sorry about that – Clyde Kertzer Feb 25 '23 at 04:03
  • You can reverse it now. I understand matters like this are frustrating, but we need to think globally about site health. If there are so many dupes that it is impossible for students to locate the "best" answers via searches, then the site fails miserably as a library of good answers. If you think your answer adds something novel then you can delete it and repost it in one of the dupes (and/or comment on the old answers to help improve them). Hopefully, eventiually, after enough iterative refinement, our canonical answers will be close to "proofs from the book". – Bill Dubuque Feb 25 '23 at 04:11
  • Well I didn’t know the problem was a dupe. I figured if it has been unanswered for 8 years it’s certainly not a dupe else it would already have been found. It’s annoying that I get in trouble after putting lots of effort into my answers only for you to find dupes of them convinently after I answer them. I just feel like you are targeting my number theory answers which I’m bummed about – Clyde Kertzer Feb 25 '23 at 04:36
  • 8 years ago there was far less effort on site organization (back then I spent 10x less effort looking for dupes). And there was far less moderator enforcement before EOQS was imposed a couple years ago. Nowadays I review almost all Q&A's in my tags. Most common elementary number theory exercises (like above) have been answered many times over by now (there are probably over a hundred versions of this, and at least 10 exact instances). Btw, note also that this question is a PSQ so answering it violates the above linked EOQS policy (I highly recommend that you read that). Best of luck. – Bill Dubuque Feb 25 '23 at 08:09