palindromic squares of palindromes
I've tried solving the same problem yesterday. I managed to brute-force my way to finding all fair and square (palindromes whose square root is a palindrome) numbers from 1 to $10^{14}$:
1, 4, 9, 121, 484, 10201, 12321, 14641, 40804, 44944, 1002001, 1234321, 4008004, 100020001, 102030201, 104060401, 121242121, 123454321, 125686521, 400080004, 404090404, 10000200001, 10221412201, 12102420121, 12345654321, 40000800004, 1000002000001, 1002003002001, 1004006004001, 1020304030201, 1022325232201, 1024348434201, 1210024200121, 1212225222121, 1214428244121, 1232346432321, 1234567654321, 4000008000004, 4004009004004
My solution was correct, and the second dataset was solved. But I couldn't find a proper way to calculate all fair and square numbers up to $10^{100}$.
I showed this to my wife this morning, and she noticed an interesting pattern of numbers within my list:
121, 10201, 1002001, 102030201, 10000200001, 1000002000001
484, 40804, 4008004, 400080004, 40000800004, 4000008000004
12321, 1002003002001,
Some fair and square numbers re-appear with space padding. Let's try beyond $10^{14}$. Adding some zeros to $1020302030406040302030201$, whose square root is $1010100010101$ - a palindrome!
Wish I had my wife with me when I solved this yesterday.
I don't have a mathematical explanation for this phenomena, but I guess that for some reason, every fair and square number beyond a certain boundary can be built by adding zeros to a smaller palindrome.