"Factored Out" March 29, 2024

[Acarl]

Sorry. I think the explanation is almost more confusing. You have to eliminate letters unless BOTH across and down clue numbers are prime. I solved thanks to the zoom meet, but I’m not happy about it. When does the bar open?

[Joe Ross]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DON! @ship4u

[Deb F]

Oh, wow! Happy Birthday, Don! My gift to you was not bugging you for help on the meta. Even with your guidance, this would have been a tough one.

Happy Day to you and a good week to all Muggles!

[DBMiller]

I asked myself, "Where do you find prime real estate?"

Usually at the intersection of major thoroughfares. The title, 34a, and all the math related answers pointed to prime numbers. So if you look at all those intersections, you get the answer.

[Ergcat]

Happy Birthday, Don! Born on April Fools Day must be interesting!

[mheberlingx100]

I asked myself, "Where do you find prime real estate?"

Usually at the intersection of major thoroughfares. The title, 34a, and all the math related answers pointed to prime numbers. So if you look at all those intersections, you get the answer.

I was looking for beachfront property, but didn’t find any.

[arecibo]

Ashore! Only took me two days to realize that the hint meant X' and not X.

Ultimately, a fair and even clever installment, though I don't like the title.

Me neither. The title sent me down the deepest rabbit hole ever. I prime-factored every number in the grid and built groups of letters from composites and their primes. Nada. I convolved groups. Nil. Surely the Lambert W function would do it. Not! Hit the right method by accident and out of desperation. And I was angry that there was no factoring required at all.

You and me both. I also applied Eratosthenes's Sieve to the grid, twice -- once treating the black squares as cells to be counted and once not -- in the hope that a meaningful text would emerge. And then on Day 3 I had the idea (not bad) of "factoring out" common letters between horizontal answers.

Somebody wrote, "If the answer has a clue number that can be factored, take it out of the grid". But of course, prime numbers aren't distinguished by having no factors; in fact, they don't have even only one factor!

Thoughts from the peanut gallery:

Maybe a fairer title would have been "Land Rush" -- to hint at the point that what mattered were ranges of cells, and to evoke the "value" in the clue for 34A so that a plot that was doubly prime would be doubly sought.

Also maybe this is a case where including "two-word" in the meta clue ("certain two-word property") would not have hurt. Given that the true answer is plural, I don't think they'd receive many correct SWAGs, and having "two-word" might have made less attractive any set of, say, 12 or fewer letters.

[HunterX]

34A's PRIME REAL ESTATE meant the GRID to me, since it involves AREA. I started with the grid squares with prime numbers, only, which yielded gibberish.

This is what kept me stuck for the longest time, until being shoved off of it. I kept thinking REAL ESTATE meant “areas.” The grid is the representation of an area, divided into 15 x 15 smaller “lots” if you will. So eliminating everything not prime meant, to me, not eliminating any answers that were. I did start with just the squares that had prime numbers in them, but, as Joe said, that results in gibberish.

It was only after being shoved into looking not for prime numbered answers, but rather clues, which do not represent areas, that I got it. So you actually DO eliminate prime number squares, (i.e. PRIME REAL ESTATE). Eliminating 1A knocks out squares 2 and 3.

That was my nit.

What also kept me stumbling (and this is not a nit with the puzzle) was all the different ways to use prime numbers to identify things in the grid. Besides the prime squares and answers of prime number clues, there are many others, such as:
-Number of letters in the words?
-Letters that are “prime” according to their order in the alphabet?
-Number or words/letters in the clues?
-Etc.

[ship4u]

Thanks for the Birthday well wishes @Joe Ross , @Deb F and @Ergcat !

There have been times that I felt it quite fitting that I should be born on All Fool's Day!

Now, let's hope that Mike Miller plans to send me a Birthday gift......

[ship4u]

With the many references to mathematics in this puzzle, I parsed the title in light of an Algebra application. My understanding is that to "Factor Out" in Algebra means "to isolate a common factor." Hence, I interpreted that to be a clue to "isolate", i.e., pull out, the common letters (factors) in the answers corresponding to prime numbers.

[Doug C]

I read 3 different explanations 3 times each and still don't get it. Not meant to be for me....

[woozy]

"By crossing out all of the answers whose clue numbers are not prime"

Doesn't that sound convoluted? Isn't it more natural to "look at the letters that are intersection of prime clue numbered answers"? I dunno sounds off to me.

[hoover]

I think I was at a disadvantage because I solve on the computer, and it looks like this was a candidate for pencil and paper. I didn't even have a Hail Mary for this one. I thought "numbers whose prime factorization has 3 primes" was genius, but it didn't result in anything that looked like English.

Here's my entry for the Rabbit Hole Award.

Eliminate primes

Code: Select all

1 4 6 8 9 10 12 14 15 16 18 20 21 22 24 25 26 27 28 30 32 33 34 35 36 38 39 40 42 44 45 46 48 49 50 51 52 54 55 56 57 58 60 62 63
A O P T H A  L  B  B  L  A  M  R  D  A  S  S  T  C  M  H  M

...Oh. Eliminate *all but* primes.

Code: Select all

2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19 23 29 31 37 41 43 47 53 59 61 
F R A P L  A  A  Y  T  T  B  T  S  L  N  E  A  S

...Hmm, there are a lot of references to the number 3. What about finding all numbers whose prime factorization has 3 primes? like 30 = 2,3,5

Code: Select all

 8 = 2 2 2    T
12 = 2 2 3    B
18 = 2 3 3    A
20 = 2 2 5    M
28 = 2 2 7    C
30 = 2 3 5    M
42 = 2 3 7    O
44 = 2 2 11   A
45 = 3 3 5    C
50 = 2 5 5    S
52 = 2 2 13   O

References to 3:

Code: Select all

BETELGEUSE
TRISECT

Other pointers:

Code: Select all

ARITH
PRIMEREALESTATE
NUMERO
RATIONAL
TRADE?

What happens if we remove the letters in prime numbered spaces from the 3 longest answers

Code: Select all

BETELGEUSE
PRIMEREALESTATE
NOMANSLAND

BETELGEUSE
B..E.G.USE       1-10 remove 2,3,5,7
.ET.L.E...
PRIMEREALESTATE
.R.MER.A.EST.TE 11-25 remove 11,13,17,19,23
P..M.R.ALE.T.TE  1-15 remove 2,3,5,7,11,13
.RI.E.E...S.A..  1-15 keep 2,3,5,7,11,13
NOMANSLAND
NOM.N.LAND      26-35 remove 29,31
N..A.S.AND       1-10 remove 2,3,5,7
.OM.N.L...       1-10 keep 2,3,5,7

Take 2 symmetric themers and TRADE prime-positioned letters

Code: Select all

BETELGEUSE
.ET.L.E...
NOMANSLAND
.OM.N.L...

BOMENGLUSE
NETALSEAND

Divide the 2 symmetric themers into 3 parts, take first and last parts

Code: Select all

BET PRIME NO
USE STATE AND

[ZooAnimalsOnWheels]

"By crossing out all of the answers whose clue numbers are not prime"

Doesn't that sound convoluted? Isn't it more natural to "look at the letters that are intersection of prime clue numbered answers"? I dunno sounds off to me.

I'm sure it will be different for everyone, but I sat in on both Zoom groups this week, and I saw many people who took a while to parse the "look for letters at intersections... " instruction, especially for letters like the 'A' that sits at the intersection of 5A and 5D, because it doesn't seem like an intersection of two different 5's. Or wondering what to do with the letters in, say, 3D because none of the letters are at intersections with an across prime. And then they are tracing each cell back to two different numbers and trying to decide if both of them are prime...

If you mechanically cross out all the composite (and #1) acrosses, and then the downs, I feel there's not as much room for error or misinterpretation.

[HeyMikey]

We have success occasionally when we try to reverse-engineer a guess at the answer. PRIME REAL ESTATE and CERTAIN PROPERTY went into the hopper along with all the math entries. The resulting inspired guess was SUBDIVISION. But that rabbit hole was very shallow. We tried to dig deeper but hit only rock.

Hints from the Friday Zoom call led to near immediate success. Thanks Zoomers!

[OohLaAHA]

Hello everyone. I've been lurking here about two years, and I've read all the explanations for this puzzle and none made any sense to me. When I read that other people had the same experience, I decided to take a picture of the way I was able to figure out the solution.

WSJ Factored Out

[Joe Ross]

Not an April Fools Day item:

I forgot to submit my answer this week.

You are all welcome.

[Joe Ross]

"By crossing out all of the answers whose clue numbers are not prime"

Doesn't that sound convoluted? Isn't it more natural to "look at the letters that are intersection of prime clue numbered answers"? I dunno sounds off to me.

No.

🙂

[sharkicicles]

Hello everyone. I've been lurking here about two years, and I've read all the explanations for this puzzle and none made any sense to me. When I read that other people had the same experience, I decided to take a picture of the way I was able to figure out the solution.
20240401_111411[1].jpg

Impressed by the solution... almost even more impressed by the handwriting

[woozy]

"By crossing out all of the answers whose clue numbers are not prime"

Doesn't that sound convoluted? Isn't it more natural to "look at the letters that are intersection of prime clue numbered answers"? I dunno sounds off to me.

No.

I guess my issue is when I looked at the words with prime clue numbers a bunch of the letters were actually *removed* from them because they belonged to non-primes in the other direction. However looking at the squares that were EXTRA special in that the were in prime clues in both directions was pretty clear.

To remove all but primes sort of sounds like "keep the primes". If I read it a second time "remove anything even remotely tainted by non-primeness" makes sense but it wasn't natural to me.