Baez's "42" - Solving the first puzzle

In a blog post, John Baez proposes the following puzzle:

Consider solutions of

with positive integers and show that the largest possible value of is .

We can start by writing the following simple Python program to solve the problem, using integer arithmetic to avoid floating point problems:

from itertools import count
for r in count(1):
    for q in xrange(1, r + 1):
        for p in xrange(1, q + 1):
            # 1/p + 1/q + 1/r = 1/2
            # qr + pr + pq = pqr/2
            # 2(qr + pr + pq) = pqr
            if 2*(q*r + p*r + p*q) == p*q*r:
                print p, q, r

This program shows us ten possible values (including 42 in the last triple),

6 6 6
4 8 8
5 5 10
4 6 12
3 12 12
3 10 15
3 9 18
4 5 20
3 8 24
3 7 42

but, as it’s trying to enumerate all integer triples, it doesn’t halt.

To be sure not to miss any interesting integer triple, we must explore them more carefully:

from itertools import count
for p in count(1):
    # checks if we are leaving room for 1/q + 1/r
    # 1/p >= 1/2
    if 2 >= p:
        continue # we need smaller values of 1/p
    # checks if we can reach 1/2 with the biggest legal values for 1/q and 1/r
    # 1/p + 1/p + 1/p < 1/2
    if 3 * 2 < p: 
        break
    for q in count(p):
        # checks if we are leaving room for 1/r
        # 1/p + 1/q >= 1/2
        if 2 * (q + p) >= p * q: 
            continue
        # checks if we can reach 1/2 with the biggest legal value for 1/r
        # 1/p + 1/q + 1/q < 1/2
        if 2 * (q + 2 * p) < p * q:
            break
        for r in count(q):
            lhs = 2 * (q * r + p * r + p * q)
            rhs = p * q * r
            # 1/p + 1/q + 1/r > 1/2
            if lhs > rhs:
                continue
            # 1/p + 1/q + 1/r < 1/2
            elif lhs < rhs:
                break
            # 1/p + 1/q + 1/r = 1/2
            else:
                print p, q, r

The results are the same, but now we can be sure of having the whole solution.