The most efficient solution to this problem can be achieved using dynamic programming. Like every dynamic problem concept, we will not recompute the subproblems. A temporary 2D matrix will be constructed and value will be stored using the top-down approach.

The idea is to use Binary Search. We fix a value for the number of pages as mid of current minimum and maximum. We initialize minimum and maximum as 0 and sum-of-all-pages respectively. If a current mid can be a solution, then we search on the lower half, else we search in higher half.

By finding next smaller element and previous smaller element for every element in O(n) time complexity and O(n) auxiliary space .