When you rent a table at a pool hall, the proprietor gives you a 4-by-4 tray of 16 balls, as shown in Figure (a) below. One of these balls, called the \cue ball", is white, and the remaining 15 are numbered 1 through 15. At the beginning of a game, the numbered balls are racked up in a triangle (without the cue ball), as shown in Figure (b).
Now imagine other pool-like games where you have a cue ball and x numbered balls. You'd like to be able to rack up the x numbered balls in a triangle, and have all x+1 balls perfectly ll a square m-by-m tray. For what values of x is this possible? In this problem you'll be given an lower bound a and upper bound b, and asked how many numbers within this range have the above property.