Something is happening in 2021 that has not happened in over a century.
2021, like 1920 before it, is a roaring year.
A year represented by a positive integer y is roaring if
the decimal writing (without leading zeroes) of y is the concatenation
of the decimal writing (without leading zeroes) of two or more distinct consecutive
positive integers, in increasing order. In this case, 2021 is a roaring year
because it is the concatenation of 20 and 21.
Three calendars from roaring years, marked to show how roaring their years are.
Other examples of roaring years are
12, 789, 910, 1234, and 9899100.
2020 was not roaring because the only list of two or more positive integers
that concatenate into 2020 is [20, 20], and it is not made of consecutive
integers. Similarly, there are only three lists for 2019:
[20, 1, 9], [201, 9], and [20, 19]. The first two are not made of consecutive
integers, while the third does
not have the integers in increasing order. Thus, 2019 was also not roaring. As a final
example, 778 was not a roaring year because [7, 78] and [77, 8] are not
made up of consecutive integers and [7, 7, 8] is not made up of distinct integers.
Given the current year (which may or may not be roaring),
find what the next roaring year is going to be.