Drealmer's Tumblr

2009 / 09 / 09

A friend of mine challenged a few us to find a link between 999 and the forename Alain, because the 9th of September is Saint Alain feast day (link).

Here is what another friend came up with:

If you replace each letter of “Alain” with its place in the alphabet and do the sum: A + L + A + I + N = 1 + 12 + 1 + 9 + 14 you get 37 which is the same as the biggest prime factor of 999: 3 x 3 x 3 x 37.

On top of that, you’ll notice that the sum of the other prime factors is 9 and that 37 is the 9th prime number above 9 (11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 27, 29, 31, 37).

Finally, if you multiply the letters instead of doing the sum, you get: A x L x A x I x N = 1 x 12 x 1 x 9 x 14 = 1512 and if you sum 1 + 5 + 1 + 2 you get 9 again.

How he managed to come up with all this is beyond me.