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Why Bjorn Poonen's question about polynomial representing all nonnegative integers was nice?

I guess I won't even need to give this link, Polynomial representing all nonnegative integers, since this is perhaps the most famous question of MO until now.

Yes, I agree that this is a very interesting and natural curiosity seeing the proof of Gauss and Lagrange. But may someone tell me why this question particularly interesting? Is there something deeper here? The same query applies to Fermat polygonal number theorem. Is there anything that these theorems reveal us about the deeper structure of integers?

abcdxyz
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