Problems & Puzzles: Puzzles

Puzzle 163. P+SOD(P)

Enoch Haga sent the following puzzle:

Let's start with a prime P, then let's add to P the sum of the digits of P. The new number may be, or not, another prime number. If not, then repeat the procedure until you get a prime number.

Example:

Starting with P=2, the sequence generated is:

2, 4, 8, 16, 23 (prime & bingo!), Large of the sequence, L = 5

Questions:

a) Can L take any value?
b) Find the earliest primes corresponding to L=100, 200, 300, .. 1000

The Enoch's puzzle let me think in some other similar questions: what about if we use the same procedure to generate the members of the same sequences but now we add the condition that all the members must be prime numbers ending when a composite number follows?

Example: P=277, L=4: 277, 293, 307, 317 (all are prime numbers)

Here are the earlier sequences of L members of this type, that I have obtained:

c) Can L take any value?
d) Find the earliest prime for L=9, 10, 11, 12 & 13

Last, what if we ask additionally that all the primes in the sequence need to be consecutive primes.

Example: P=11, L=3: 11, 13, 17

For this case, the largest sequence that I have found is: P=1427411, L=4

e) Find the earliest prime for L=5, 6 &7

Solution:

Sudipta Das found, for the question b) that "the earliest prime P for L = 100 is 954977". This same value was also found independently by Jean-Christophe Colin.

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Sudipta Das found, for the question b) that "the earliest prime P for L = 200 is 1306002569"

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Felice Russo made a statistical analysis for the question c) Can L take any value? and found an interesting result: "The experimental data seem to support that L cannot take any value and that most likely the maximum value should be L=14"

If you want to read the Russo's complete analysis you may download it clicking here.

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On 16/9/6 C. Rivera wrote:

Smallest solution to question e) for K=5:

317130731, 317130757, 317130791, 317130823, 317130851

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