Today’s Puzzle:

It’s 2022. Happy New Year! I wanted to make a puzzle that has 20 and 22 as clues and thought about what I could do.

I continue to be inspired by an old addition puzzle Sarah Carter @mathequalslove shared on Twitter:

NEW PUZZLE!

Triangle Sums – Arrange the numbers 1 to 9 in the squares so that the sum of the numbers in each pair of squares is the same as the number in the triangle that touches both squares in the pair. https://t.co/YQknFMTYiO #mtbos #iteachmath #puzzlingclassroom pic.twitter.com/AjRgVc1YFG

— Sarah Carter (@mathequalslove) September 23, 2021

I decided to tweak that puzzle into a multiplication puzzle. I ran into a problem, however. Having products in every triangle made the puzzle way too easy. How do I fix that? I removed some of the product clues. Can you use logic and factoring to know where each factor from 1 to 12 belongs? Can you determine the missing products? I hope you have lots of fun finding the puzzle’s only solution! And I hope you make the factors fit instead of having a fit trying!

Here’s something I haven’t told you before: I made lots of multiplication-table puzzles years before I started blogging. I wanted to give the puzzles a good name. At first, I called them “Turn the Tables on Multiplication” or “Turn the Tables” for short. I thought that title was clever but a little bit unwieldy. For a short time, I called the puzzles “Factor Fits.” It was a play on words because all the factors fit, but they might give you fits as you try to find them. I finally settled on “Find the Factors.” That title doubled as instructions for the puzzles. I still liked the name “Factor Fits,” and this puzzle lets me give new life to that name.

Factors of 1706:

• 1706 is a composite number.
• Prime factorization: 1706 = 2 × 853.
• 1706 has no exponents greater than 1 in its prime factorization, so √1706 cannot be simplified.
• The exponents in the prime factorization are 1 and 1. Adding one to each exponent and multiplying we get (1 + 1)(1 + 1) = 2 × 2 = 4. Therefore 1706 has exactly 4 factors.
• The factors of 1706 are outlined with their factor pair partners in the graphic below.

More About the Number 1706:

1706 is the sum of two squares:
41² + 5² = 1706.

1706 is the hypotenuse of a Pythagorean triple:
410-1656-1706, calculated from 2(41)(5), 41² – 5², 41² + 5².
It is also 2 times (205-828-853).