As Halloween approaches, I remember that five years ago today, I hit the publish button for the first time, and my puzzles became available for anyone with an internet connection to use.

Today’s puzzle looks a little bit like a cauldron. What’s brewing on my 5-year blogiversary?

Print the puzzles or type the solution in this excel file: 10-factors-1259-1270

I continue to be very grateful to WordPress and the WordPress community for making blogging and publishing easy and enjoyable. I am also very grateful to my readers who have done so much to make this blog grow.

I’m a lot busier now than I was five years ago. Besides blogging, I have a full-time job and a part-time job. I like both of these jobs because I like helping students understand mathematics better. Sometimes I don’t have the time I would like to work on my blog. Nevertheless, I still have blogging goals I want to reach so lately I find myself playing catch-up more often than not.

Now I’ll write a little about the number 1270:

• 1270 is a composite number.
• Prime factorization: 1270 = 2 × 5 × 127
• The exponents in the prime factorization are 1, 1, and 1. Adding one to each and multiplying we get (1 + 1)(1 + 1)(1 + 1) = 2 × 2 × 2 = 8. Therefore 1270 has exactly 8 factors.
• Factors of 1270: 1, 2, 5, 10, 127, 254, 635, 1270
• Factor pairs: 1270 = 1 × 1270, 2 × 635, 5 × 254, or 10 × 127
• 1270 has no square factors that allow its square root to be simplified. √1270 ≈ 35.63706

1270 is the hypotenuse of a Pythagorean triple:
762-1016-1270 which is (3-4-5) times 254