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You shall form three dice, placing 18 distinct integers on the faces of three cubes. Your goal is to be able to obtain all the integers between 1 and 216, inclusive, as the sum of the integers on the top faces of these three dice with a single throw.

What can be the minimum value for the largest of these integers?

(Integers: ...-2,-1,0,1,2,...)

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My intuition says it should be 0 :) – ABcDexter 21 hours ago
1  
@ABcDexter : In that case the largest sum would be $-3 = 0+(-1)+(-2)$. Lower limit should be increased to 73 at least ($216 = 73+72+71$). – z100 20 hours ago
    
@z100 I was not saying about sum of numbers on a single dice, but on a single face. And never did i ever say that my intuition can't be wrong! – ABcDexter 20 hours ago

A lower bound is

$73$: when getting the sum to be $216$, the average value must be $72$. However, this would require three of the numbers to be the same. Hence at least one number must be $73$ or bigger.

An upper bound is

$77$: achieved by the dice $\{ 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77 \}, \{ 40, 46, 52, 58, 64, 70 \}$ and $\{ -111, -75, -39, -3, 33, 69 \}$. These dice come from taking the units, sixes and thirty-sixes in the base-six representation, which represent the integers between $0$ and $215$ uniquely. We then shift the units by $72$, the sixes by $40$ and the thirty-sixes by $-111$ to get the numbers from $1$ to $216$ without repeating any faces of the dice.

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1  
I don't understand what question your second block answers. Why can't I just take a very large integer $N$ and add it to each side on your first die and subtract it from each side on your third die? – Peregrine Rook 15 hours ago
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@PeregrineRook it is showing what an upper bound on the minimum achievable largest integer is (rather than an upper bound on the largest integer). – Jonathan Allan 15 hours ago

The smallest number I could find was 75. I think the way to prove it is to prove that the only way to get 216 distinct consecutive numbers by summing 3 three dice is for each die to be of the form, $a + n*6^b$

Here is what I did:

I started with these 3 sequences which are able to reproduce the number 1-216. Basically this is the first three digits of a base 6 representation. Each row represents one die.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
0, 6, 12, 18, 24, 30
0, 36, 72, 108, 144, 180

Then I added or subtracted from each row (die). The numbers I used were +68 +37 -105. Since the sum of these 3 numbers is 0, the new set is still able to produce the numbers 1-216:

Here are the resulting 3 dice:

69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74
37, 43, 49, 55, 61, 67
-105, -69, -33, 3, 39, 75

I was able to find an option where the largest number was 73, but it required a repeat. The only way I could find where there were no repeats was to have every number in the first row (die) greater than every number in the second row (die)

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That's a very nice construction - I don't know why I didn't try to make two of the faces bigger than 72. I suspect your answer may be optimal; it would be nice to see a proof! – Shagnik 6 hours ago

Edit: This is wrong, I missed the part about the numbers needing to be distinct.

The largest die must be

72

or more. Otherwise, the largest number you could roll would be

71 + 71 + 71 = 213 < 216.

Here's a labeling which achieves that minimum:

67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72
42, 48, 54, 60, 66, 72
-108, -72, -36, 0, 36, 72

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2  
In the specification of the puzzle, the 18 numbers are meant to be distinct, but you have 72 repeated three times here. – Shagnik 20 hours ago
    
@Mike Earnest, Upvoted the answer, I believe it will be modified quickly with a correct solution for 73 or 74 or 75. – z100 20 hours ago
    
Whoops! Totally missed that part! – Mike Earnest 20 hours ago
1  
Decreasing all values on one die by one while increasing all values on another die will achieve the lower bound shown by Shagnik. Assuming the other conditions for the sum hold, of course. – Nij 18 hours ago
    
@Nij Good idea to use transformation which preserves the sum, but 66, 67 and 71 does not allow it. – z100 15 hours ago

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