One Word Wonder

Woohoo! My second 1st!

# It took you 1 minute and 30 seconds to solve this puzzle.
# You were the 1st Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
# Average solve time: 1 minute and 30 seconds.
# Median solve time: 1 minute and 30 seconds.
# 4.348% of Tanga members that have attempted this puzzle have solved it.

Ok... the 3rd grade teacher in me has to ask...

is the punctuation error an accident or is it a hint?

do you mean "these word problems' lengths"?
(apostrophe goes after the s in plural nouns)

or do you mean it just the way it is?

It took you 7 minutes and 47 seconds to solve this puzzle.
You were the 2nd Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

[2] When you solve it you won't care.

ugh... I hate math.

Ack. [2] You caught me. The apostrophe is misplaced, though, as [3] mentions, it should not effect your chances of solving.

(I know it should be "affect your chances"... I'm just teasing at this point.) :)

It took you 6 minutes and 50 seconds to solve this puzzle.
You were the 6th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

I think this is my first top ten. Sweet.

* It took you 7 minutes and 47 seconds to solve this puzzle.
* You were the 8th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
* Average solve time: 6 minutes and 9 seconds.
* Median solve time: 7 minutes and 47 seconds.
* 10.811% of Tanga members that have attempted this puzzle have solved it.

I've loaded a corrected image. Swap away.

Thank you maluba [3] and refurdson [7].

# It took you 6 minutes and 19 seconds to solve this puzzle.
# You were the 10th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

Squeaked into the top 10! Neat puzzle.

I spent way too long counting dots...

Any salt?

# It took you 38 minutes and 28 seconds to solve this puzzle.
# You were the 13th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
# Average solve time: 10 minutes and 2 seconds.
# Median solve time: 7 minutes and 47 seconds.

Got most of the way there and then punted with a word made up of all but the first letter... gotta figure out how to drop the first letter..
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13] nrkii - Prime numbers are your friend and then its straight tanga numbers, as usual.

Some salt:
Save your counting for the other part of the puzzle - not the dots.

Reminds me of a joke...
A Mathematician, a Physicist and and an Engineer were asked to prove the following premise:
"All odd numbers are prime"

The Mathematician answered:
One's a prime, Three's a prime, Five's a prime, Seven's a prime, Nine's not a prime
No. All odd numbers are not prime.

The Physicist answered:
One's a prime, Three's a prime, Five's a prime, Seven's a prime, Nine's not a prime, Eleven's a prime, Thirteen's a prime, Fifteen's not a prime, Seventeen's a prime, Nineteen's a prime.
Nine and fifteen are obviously experimental errors.
All odd numbers are prime within the limits of experimental error.

The Engineer answered
One's a prime, Three's a prime, Five's a prime, Seven's a prime, Nine's a prime, Eleven's a prime ......

(my sister-in-law - English major - said "what's a prime?")

Seems that the mathematician, the physicist and the engineer are all initially wrong...

[18] spamwise
The question was about Odd numbers (2 is not odd)

edit:
Hmmm one's NOT a prime???!!! (said the engineer)

-----------------------------
well, I guess if one's not a prime, the whole joke goes down the drain, because it would be disproved right off the bat.

[19] That's fine. I still object to their initial claims... :)

American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
"prime number

A number that cannot be divided evenly by any other number except itself and the number one; 1, 3, 5, 7, and 11 are prime numbers."

But not for this puzzle....

AHA! That's why I had to drop the first letter of my original answer!

One is NOT a prime in this puzzle!
One is considered a prime in most circumstances of mathematics!

Example:
The set of natural numbers from 1 until a number is a field if and only if that number is a prime. This is not true if one isn't a prime....sorry geeking out...

Plus, AmHer is wrong because 2 is a prime.

Puzzle maker, note please that 9 is NOT a prime, so the answer is impossible! (If using the method of counting into the word!)

[23] bcgrote
Nine doesn't have to be a prime to get the answer...

True, I spose not, but this one was confusing about when to use the primes and when not!

But still a good head scratcher to get going!

[17] I've heard it with mathematicians saying, "3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime...therefore, by induction, all odd numbers are prime!"

And I've also heard an extended version with computer programmers:
"3 is prime, 3 is prime, 3 is prime, 3 is prime..."

Cute one.

[22] I see your awesome geekdom with a noxious pop-culture reference:

"But 1 CAN'T be prime because on 'Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?' one of the million dollar questions was 'What is the only prime number that is a factor of 16?' And the answer was 2!!"

(The guy playing didn't know the answer...but it prompted a conversation with my roommate about why 1 would or wouldn't be considered prime.)

EDIT: [29] That's what my roommate and I finally settled on, though I agree it was a bit counterintuitive at first.

When I was first introduced to prime numbers, I felt that 1 ought to qualify. After all, it's only positive integer factors are 1 and itself.

However, a prime must have exactly 2 distinct factors, 1 and itself. 1 fails to meet this actual definition.

WRT primes,
I think there may be an "old school" and "new school" division. I was taught that one was prime, as was my father (a mathematician for 60 years). And I see some definitions on the net that have one as a prime. But there are also definitions that exclude one.

Regardless, neat puzzle Spamwise!

Tough, but clever.

Thanks for the kind words.

I didn't realize there were two formal schools of thought on the subject. I didn't mean to lead anyone astray.

This just in...
One has a rock solid alibi tonight, and is not a prime suspect. It is not the droid you're looking for.

I had this "prime" argument recently. One is not considered prime in the decade I've been teaching it, but knowing any of this isn't helping me. I'm coming up with a lot of things that mean nothing.

[33] Mundane dropped some nice salt at BGG (starting pg 299 I think).

really fun, spamwise! great puzzle.

Sorry everyone but 1 is not a prime number.

Fun puzzle. Salt free for me today.

OK. I've identified words with prime numbers of letters, as well as words that are 'prime' based on their order in the clue. Am I on the right track?

Never mind. Got it!

pretty much salt-free except somehow I've missed the first letter. I'll havta figure out why.

EDIT: DOH! I didn't think 2 was prime.

On the right track, but needed some help from BGG to get primed.

I can't access BGG, can someone share the salt HERE... near the puzzle... without requiring traversal to another website?

Cheers!

The instructions for this page state "Discuss today’s puzzle here. Be creative, not obvious with hints."

Over on BGG, things are often, shall we say, "less subtle". There's even another blog, the link to which I've lost, but it was mentioned on BGG during the puzzlethon, that was even more blunt.

There should be sufficient salt here to get things done. (Granted, that's from the perspective of someone who's already completed it, so, it's hard to be objective.)

Regroup. Re-read. Retry.

Regards.

Prime Rib?
Prime Time?
Deion?

Minister?
Meridian?
Optimus?

Can someone provide the BGG link? I can't find the right page on their site. THANKS!

[45] kthuma
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/131250/page/299

Did anyone else notice that the connected line of dots starting at the top left and ending at the bottom right is NOT connected to the prime spiral?

This L-shaped line contains 36 dots, precisely the same number of letters as

"these word lengths as steps into liberated"

and drove me crazy for 45 minutes as I tried to make the shaded letters

"w-e-p-i-l-t"

mean something.

Argrrgghhhhh!!!!

[47] siletnp, I'm terribly sorry about that. I unintentionally miscentered my spiral. I should have shifted down one row and the spiral that exits on the upper right would have connected with the upper left.

Wow, what a nasty puzzle *that* would have been. (Go through all the steps you did and then notice that part of the background doesn't connect... uff da.)

The background was supposed to be a subtle hint/reference. Not a 45 minute aggravating tangent. Again, very sorry. (But kudos on your powers of observation.)