unforum

[Bendover]

Just an update ,as of June 12 the Clay Math Institute's reply to an inquiring E-Mail is

[Guin]

[fretty]

I think it's time for an undercover operation to send a mole into Mind Candy to access the solution for Riemann, there has to be one somewhere in there!

Could this be what Mind Candy want, like they intended a worldwide client be made for Thirteenth Labour?

[Guin]

[UKver2.0]

[GasparLewis]

Remember: a disproof is equally valid for the points, or even a definitive proof that it's unprovably true!

There are FOUR truth values, thanks to Godel: true, false, unprovably true, unprovably fasle. If it was unprovably false, there would be a number off the critical line, and would be provable, so that's out. This leaves only true (provable or not) and false (provably so).

Excellent book covering the history and scratches the surface of what exactly the Riemann Hypothesis is, and where we're finding our advances (quantum chaos and non-commutative geometry)?

The Music Of The Primes by Marcus du Sautoy.

Finished re-reading it about a week ago; still a great book.

[jbd]

[fretty]

Has anyone looked at the new print of the card to see if there are any differences. If they haven't changed Riemann's initials on the new print then the correction on the solution page could possibly be a clue.

Also don't know if it helps but have found a proof reading pdf with margin marks on:
http://www.ideography.co.uk/proof/proofmarks.pdf

[Krisjohn]

Holy carp, 42 pages. Good thing I was trying to avoid work.

I scored the card in question in my second pack ^_^ -- though I haven't had it handy while reading through this thread. I'll give it a good look for secret messages when I get home, but I thought I'd just post a thought:

If the card is deliberately not solvable, that strongly implies that the back is more important than the front.

Unfortunately, I have very few cards at the moment and won't necessarily be able to deduce anything from the map fragment. However, I will be examining the back for anything out of place as much as the front.

Also, I've attached a humourous cartoon that you might all enjoy.

[Tintintin]

Right, time to exhume this particular dead equine and flog it a bit...

Some initial disclaimers: I don't have the card, I certainly don't know anything about super-theoretical ultra-high-end maths, and I am probably going over extremely well-trodden ground (and so I shall willingly turn the other cheek for any and all inbound troutage)...

I concur that this card should probably be ignored at present; if it is some sort of cunning bluff, then it's eluded all of us thus far, and if it *is* 'just' a straight-up proof of Riemann etc etc, then there's precious little any of us could do to crack it.

However, it occurs to me, from a pragmatic and reverse-thinking standpoint, that there must be *something* on the PXC database for the attempted solves for this card. That is to say, they can't say we're wrong (and especially not via an automated response) unless there is an answer that they know to be right. There must be something on their database that gives an accepted confirmed-solve result - OR it must be that MC *don't* know the answer any more than any of us, and are holding out for some maths genius to solve it, so that they can retrospectively input a solution. This would mean that any answer submitted to the card would give a 'wrong' response at the present time, which would invalidate the card as part of the larger puzzle - for instance, there is no way to complete the Silver Circle set, no way to receive that particular email, without Riemann being solveable, so the extra points for the set would be largely redundant, and no way on the PXC site to get that particular map piece to display alongside the others, and so on.

So, is Riemann a publicity stunt, then? The top-end card, the holy grail, so MC can say 'our puzzles go all the way up to the hardest problem EVER' and 'anyone who solves this will get ONE MEEEEELLION DOLLARS'...? Well, who can say. It would be a bit of a poor show, to my mind, if it has been included as an integral part of the game despite being (ostensibly) an insurmountable hurdle. Sure, the nature of the meta-game is that it does not need to be solved in order to find the Cube (or so we think - who can say what the email for the complete Silver Circle set would reveal?), but there's a difference between not taking the opportunity to solve every card, and not actually being given it in the first place, because if MC don't have a solution for the card, then for all intents and purposes it is unsolveable, a dead end and not even worth attempting. All it becomes is a bit of map with a nice and rare shiny postcard on the back.

I think the Clay Math Institute prize is a red herring; winning it, proving/disproving the equation and so on would be so much more momentous than finding the Cube (I'm sorry to say, but that is the case) that I have to conclude there is a tangential or otherwise obscured and 'tricksy' solve to this one, presumably based on some sort of semantic trickery or obfuscatory wordplay that so far no-one has managed to pick up upon, which doesn't necessarily involve an *actual* proof for the equation *per se*...

Of course, it's very easy for me to say that without the slightest inkling of what form such a sneaky solution might be, and for all I know I'm seeing the mother of all elephants here, but to my mind, approaching this conundrum with my own brand of cracked logic, I think there must be a solve, otherwise it represents a fundamental problem with the cards - that you may be paying money to acquire a problem that is practically beyond the power of 99.99999% of the human race to even attempt, let alone solve.

EDIT: to end a bit more upbeat, this just gave me some cheap LOLz:

[fretty]

That was me. You can now rate cards without actually solving them. I thought I would say that it was too hard

[Tintintin]

...and today's "Ask Mind Candy" has largely scuppered my indignation and somewhat desperate insistence that there has to be a solve. Curse that floppy-haired charmer!

[Uhtoff]

No great revelation here

Just thought I'd mention that as I was driving home from work it was announced on the radio that a reclusive Russian mathematician had solved one of math's greatest problems and was up for a $1,000,000 prize. Needless to say my heart skipped a beat, until it was revealed that he'd proved the Poincare Hypothesis. Interestingly enough the maths guy (from All Soul's) they got described himself as working on another one of the Clay Maths prizes and that he was a prime numbers guy...wonder if he plays PXC too?

Anyway, made me smile, thought I'd share.

[isca]

Someone got the card before we did!

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5229702.html

[Ringtail]