Teaser 2462: [What NOW?]
From The Sunday Times, 29th November 2009 [link]
Puzzlers are often confused about whether the number 1 is prime or square, so perhaps this Teaser will clarify the issue!
• ONE is not prime, but it is an odd perfect square;
• TWO is divisible by 2 but not 4;
• The number of odd primes less than SIX is TWO.In those statements digits have consistently been replaced by capital letters, with different letters being used for different digits.
What is the number NOW?
This puzzle was originally published with no title.
[teaser2462]
Jim Randell 9:49 am on 23 January 2026 Permalink |
Here is a solution using the [[
SubstitutedExpression]] solver from the enigma.py library.The following run-file executes in 98ms. (Internal runtime of the generated code is 14.4ms).
Solution: NOW = 820.
There are two possible assignments of digits to letters:
The next prime after 563 is 569, so we count 102 odd primes if X is 4 or 7.
LikeLike
ruudvanderham 11:24 am on 23 January 2026 Permalink |
import peek import istr for o, n, e, t, w, s, i, x in istr.permutations(range(10), 8): if o * t * s != 0: if not (one := istr("=one")).is_prime() and one.is_odd() and one.is_square(): if (two := istr("=two")).is_divisible_by(2) and not two.is_divisible_by(4): if len(istr.primes(3, (six := istr("=six")))) == two: peek(one, two, six)LikeLike