About fractions whose sum is a natural number Some days ago I found an old problem of an olympiad that I always found interesting. It asks to replace each square with the numbers 1,2…30 without repeating any number, such that their sum is an integer number. square/square+square/square+square/square+square/square+square/square+square/square+square/square+square/square+square/square+square/square+square/square+square/square+square/square+square/square+square/square I got a solution by trial-and-error and it's: 14/1+23/2+11/22+19/3+10/15+29/4+9/12+17/6+5/30+25/8+21/24+16/7+20/28+27/18+13/26=53.I was wondering if there is another method different than trial-and-error. Thanks in advance for your answers.

Here's what one can play around with (and supposedly, Ian Miller started similarly):
We can build as many integer fractions as possible, namely
$\begin{array}{}\text{(1)}& \frac{30}{15}+\frac{28}{14}+\frac{26}{13}+\frac{24}{12}+\frac{22}{11}+\frac{20}{10}+\frac{18}{9}+\frac{16}{8},\end{array}$
each summand equalling $2$
As $14$ is already in use, we continue with
$\begin{array}{}\text{(2)}& \frac{21}{7}.\end{array}$
All multiples of $6$ are used, so we postpone that for a moment and continue with
$\begin{array}{}\text{(3)}& \frac{25}{5}.\end{array}$
Now we are left with $29,27,23,19,17,6,4,3,2,1$ to form five fractions. As barak manos observed, we must have the high primes $29,23,19,17$ in numerators (or otherwise, $\frac{20!}{p}$ times our sum would not be an integer - even if we had not started with the above strategy). Because of what we did so far, we also cannot have $27$ in the denominator (or otherwise $12$ times our sum would not be an integer) - but that might be different if we had started differently.
Now we try to exploit that $\frac{1}{6}+\frac{1}{3}+\frac{1}{2}$ is an integer. We observe that $29\equiv <!--\; \equiv \; -->-<!--\; -\; -->1(\mathrm{mod}6)$, $23\equiv <!--\; \equiv \; -->-<!--\; -\; -->1(\mathrm{mod}3)$, and e.g. $27\equiv <!--\; \equiv \; -->-<!--\; -\; -->1(\mathrm{mod}2)$, so that
$\begin{array}{}\text{(4)}& \frac{29}{6}+\frac{23}{3}+\frac{27}{2}\end{array}$
is an integer.
We are now left with $19,17,4,1$, and definitely end with something having a $4$ in the denominator, namely
$\begin{array}{}\text{(5)}& \frac{19}{4}+\frac{17}{1}\text{or}\frac{17}{4}+\frac{19}{1}.\end{array}$
We play around with the previous fractions to mend this. For example, we can dissect our $\frac{28}{14}$ and $\frac{21}{7}$ to form $\frac{7}{28}+\frac{21}{14}=\frac{7}{4}$ from its parts. This adjusts our quarter-integer result to either an integer result (and we are done) or to a half-integer result. Even though we can verify that we can guarantee an integer here by making the right choice in $(5)$, it should be noted that by flipping one of the fractions in $(1)$, we could turn a half-integer sum into an integer if necessary.