Consecutive integers which have digital sums that are not relatively prime

Question

What are ten smallest natural numbers n, such that n and n+1 have digital sums which are not relatively prime?

Answer 1

Compared to a natural number n, n+1 has all its digits the same except that all trailing 9s become 0s, and the last non-9 digit of n is incremented (where we implicitly include a leading zero in n). Thus if n's digital sum is d(n), d(n+1) = d(n) + 1 - 9 t(n), where t(n) is the number of trailing 9s in n.

Clearly d(n) and d(n+1) must be coprime if t(n) = 0, since two consecutive natural numbers are always coprime. If d(n+1) is not coprime with d(n), it must share a factor greater than 1; this factor must thus also be a factor of d(n) - d(n + 1) = 9 t(n) - 1.

For t(n) = 1, 9 t(n) - 1 = 8, so it suffices that d(n) is even. For t(n) = 2, 9 t(n) - 1 = 17, so d(n) must be a multiple of 17 (and since there must be exactly two trailing 9s, the smallest such value is 8899 with digital sum 34).

We can easily find ten smaller naturals with only one trailing 9 and even digital sum; the ten smallest are: 19, 39, 59, 79, 109, 129, 149, 169, 189, 219.

Answer 2

Obviously, all consecutive integers are relatively prime. Thus, we must look at

places where the digital sums of integers are nonconsecutive. Specifically, we look at n ending with 9:

19, 20 (sums: 10, 2)
39, 40 (12, 4)
79, 80 (16, 8)
109, 110 (10, 2)
129, 130 (12, 4)
169, 170 (16, 8)
219, 220 (12, 4)
259, 260 (16, 8)
309, 310 (12, 4)
349, 350 (16, 8)