Prove that a set of nine consecutive integers cannot be partitioned into two subsets with same product

Hint

  1. Show that none of the 9 consecutive numbers can be a multiple of $13$.

  2. Denote the product of the 9 consecutive numbers by $a$. Show that $a$ must be square.

  3. Look at the remainder of $a$ modulo $13$. Use 1. to see that there are only $4$ possibilities. Use 2. to find a contradiction in all 4 cases.

(This is inspired by this answer. Note that taking the residues modulo $11$ won't work but, quite surprisingly, $13$ does.)


Another idea is to write your numbers $a,a+1,...,a+8$. Let $A$ and $B$ your equal products. Then one of them (say $A$) has at most $4$ factors, and the second (B) has $\geq 5$ factors. Then $A\leq (a+8)^4$ and $B\geq a^5$, hence $(a+8)^4\geq a^5$, this show $a\leq 15$. Now you can finish using the point 2) of the answer of @azimut, using for $a=1$ the fact that the exponent of the prime $5$ is $1$ in the product $a(a+1)...(a+8)$, for $a=2$, the prime $7$, etc.