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[EvilGenius]

Hee hee, ALISDAIRPARK! I told you my grammer sucks but that statement put together with yours about my grandama gives me an image I could do without Thanks for not noticing the stupid possessive 's on "Canadians." I actually spelled grammar wrong every time today - what a retard. Maybe I'm not the right person to be proofing this card

[Guin]

have we decided on a format for the proof?

is it a final version or the one with [sic] inserts?

I only ask as I am getting my bro to look this over using his editorial knowledge.

[ALISDAIRPARK]

[magicmancraig]

Guin I think you should get your bro to look at the [sic] version, because I think thats what it means by proof.

You could get him to write down both....

[EvilGenius]

I'm gonna try both ways since the corrected passage would be easier to match with the reference answer. For example the first sentence doesn't need the word "other" in it. Should I take it out or put a [sic] after it? A real editor would cross it out (a possibility that we have yet to consider). How do you properly append [sic] to incorrect brackets, one after each of them or just one at the end of the construction? Beats me. The use of [sic] is to highlight pre-existing errors in quoted material from another author and I'm not convinced that what we are trying to convey. I have no good argument one way or the other and feel we should try both until something works.

[EvilGenius]

Tried this:

[Bendover]

I know this sounds redundant but has any one copied and pasted the theory description from the Clay site. their wording is in a totally different style and omits some extranious language and description.since we seem to be on a grammer/semantic bent it might be worth a shot since that is the "official" language of the Reimann challenge http://www.claymath.org/millennium/Riemann_Hypothesis/

[Guin]

[hairysocks]

I put the text through the spelling and grammar checker on MS Word 97 and it suggested that the last sentences in the first and last paragraphs were "long", although it didn't suggest how to shorten them.

It also suggested that the "1" at the end of the first sentence should be "one".

I think the "long" sentences may need marking with [sic, for the entire sentence], as is done in the Sentinal letters page.

[hairysocks]

[Stratman]

Taking a breather from Shuffled...
I have been a journalist all my life and used to proof read copy to be sent back to typesetters before computers.
I think using [sic] as some sort of proof mark is unlikely. I have always used this to mean 'as written' ie showing that what I have written includes a previous, noted, mistake. If I was proof reading, I would correct mistakes, not mark them like that.
I like the idea of 'the proof' meaning a proof of the card...but there are just so many possibilities, again, I think it is unlikely. Some earlier cards were tough enough to get the wording right for the answer with only a few possibilites.
The things that have struck me about this card (although I have no idea where they are leading me) are...
1 It is written all in caps (large and small caps) - unusual
2 Von's clue did not work because it was in lower case
3 Mind Candy's answer boxes do not differentiate between upper and lower case.
Some connection there?

Also, as has been mentioned, the last paragraph (…but it would also imply that there is a certain order to primes) appears to be plain wrong. Can a mathematician can confirm that, or am I reading it wrong? If it is wrong, that has to be a big clue to solving this.
Mind Candy says it can be solved - so they must have an answer - therefore it cant be proof of the hypothesis...can it?

[EvilGenius]

Stratman - a voice of reason I have been having some trouble with the [sic] thing too - I mentioned a while back that a real editor wouldn't do this but have been exploring it anyway for lack of another approach. I agree that there are way to many possibilities (I estimated about a million but that may be an exaggeration). As for your observations:

1) never considered the caps business but, looking over other cards now with that in mind, this doesn't seem unusual to me. The typesetting is wildly variable across cards, some of which use all caps (014, for instance uses just this sort of large and small cap mix);

2) ? Don't know what to make of this;

3) surely this is to keep people with the right answers from having their head's explode messing about with guessing at capitalization.

Your note brings me full circle to my very first post on this puzzle: there is a major error in the last sentence and, though you didn't recap this, there is no reason for the parenthetical note about how long the longest prime of 2004 was to appear as it has nothing to do with the Riemann Hypothesis. I, too, believe this (these) is important but I have no idea whatever as to how to proceed in that direction. I will keep thinking on that and also try to exhaust the proofing line as well (better to keep busy - at least I may be able to rule that out once and for all). I have also tried banging my head off my desk 7255733 times but the giant purple banana that has been my constant companion since about bang 400 says I'm wasting my time.

One last thing - the number 7235733 appears just like this, with no commas (I'd write it 7,235,773). Is this a British thing? If not, maybe a clue that this number means something else. I'm guessing it's the number of Hells awaiting the Mind Candy folks for ruining our lives with all this nonsense

[Guin]

just tried:

[locqust]

"so clever - so simple" as in he has a new idea on what the answer is???

[Guin]