A strictly non-palindromic number is an integer n that is not palindromic in any positional numeral system with a base b in the range 2 ≤ b ≤ n − 2. For example, the number 6 is written as "110" in base 2, "20" in base 3 and "12" in base 4, none of which are palindromes—so 6 is strictly non-palindromic.

## Definition

A representation of a number n in base b, where b > 1 and n > 0, is a sequence of k+1 digits ai (0 ≤ i ≤ k) such that

${\displaystyle n=\sum _{i=0}^{k}a_{i}b^{i))$

and 0 ≤ ai < b for all i and ak ≠ 0.

Such a representation is defined as palindromic if ai = aki for all i.

A number n is defined as strictly non-palindromic if the representation of n is non-palindromic in every base b where 2 ≤ b ≤ n-2.

The sequence of strictly non-palindromic numbers (sequence A016038 in the OEIS) starts:

0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 11, 19, 47, 53, 79, 103, 137, 139, 149, 163, 167, 179, 223, 263, 269, 283, 293, 311, 317, 347, 359, 367, 389, 439, 491, 563, 569, 593, 607, 659, 739, 827, 853, 877, 977, 983, 997, ...

For example, the number 19 written in base 2 through 17 is:

 b 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 19 in base b 10011 201 103 34 31 25 23 21 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12

None of these is a palindrome, so 19 is a strictly non-palindromic number.

The reason for the upper limit of n − 2 on the base is that all numbers are trivially palindromic in large bases:

• In base b = n − 1, n ≥ 3 is written "11".
• In any base b > n, n is a single digit, so is palindromic in all such bases.

Thus it can be seen that the upper limit of n − 2 is necessary to obtain a mathematically "interesting" definition.

For n < 4 the range of bases is empty, so these numbers are strictly non-palindromic in a trivial way.

## Properties

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All strictly non-palindromic numbers larger than 6 are prime. One can prove that a composite n > 6 cannot be strictly non-palindromic as follows. For each such n a base is shown to exist in which n is palindromic.

1. If n is even and greater than 6, then n is written "22" (a palindrome) in base n/2 − 1. (Note that if n less than or equal to 6, the base n/2 − 1 would be less than 3, so the digit "2" could not occur in the representation of n.)
2. If n is odd and greater than 1, write n = p · m, where p is the smallest prime factor of n. Clearly p ≤ m (since n is composite).
1. If p = m (that is, n = p2), there are two cases:
1. If p = 3, then n = 9 is written "1001" (a palindrome) in base 2.
2. If p > 3, then n is written "121" (a palindrome) in base p − 1.
2. p cannot equal m - 1 because both p and m are odd, so p < m − 1. Then n can be written as the two-digit number pp in base m − 1.