Today Alan and Jill Parr celebrate 50 years of marriage. I wanted to make a puzzle for their anniversary so I asked Alan for their favorite colors. He replied, “Colours? Nothing in particular, but I suppose I’d go for orange, and Jill would opt for something delicate and tasteful.”

Orange is much bolder than it is delicate so I went with his suggestion of “nothing in particular”: It’s their golden anniversary. Gold and blue go well together.

Since most people don’t want to solve puzzles on their anniversaries, I will include these puzzles in an excel file next week and wait until April 17th to update this post with the solutions.

Instead I’ve made an orange graphic with an interesting fact about the number 453 that I read at OEIS.org.

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• 453 is a composite number.
• Prime factorization: 453 = 3 x 151
• The exponents in the prime factorization are 1 and 1. Adding one to each and multiplying we get (1 + 1)(1 + 1) = 2 x 2 = 4. Therefore 453 has exactly 4 factors.
• Factors of 453: 1, 3, 151, 453
• Factor pairs: 453 = 1 x 453 or 3 x 151
• 453 has no square factors that allow its square root to be simplified. √453 ≈ 21.2838

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