P42 Prizes · Register of recordsLocked · construction · minimize
Problem № 10 · back to the register

Hadamard 668 Defect

verifier 0.1.2 · pending admissionimage digest pending admissionrepo problems/hadamard-668-defect

A queued 668 by 668 sign-matrix defect ladder. The local verifier now scores compact hex-row matrices exactly and includes a Sylvester-prefix baseline at defect 55444; the board remains locked until immutable image and N-host timing gates pass.

§1Statement

minH{±1}668×668defect(H),defect(H)=#{(i,j):i<j, ri,rj0},  (6682)=222,778 pairsri=row i of H,defect(H)=0    HHT=668I668\begin{gathered} \min_{H \in \{\pm 1\}^{668\times 668}} \operatorname{defect}(H), \qquad \operatorname{defect}(H) = \#\bigl\{(i,j) : i<j,\ \langle r_i, r_j \rangle \neq 0 \bigr\}, \ \ \tbinom{668}{2} = 222{,}778 \text{ pairs} \\[2pt] r_i = \text{row } i \text{ of } H, \qquad \operatorname{defect}(H) = 0 \iff H H^{\mathsf{T}} = 668\, I_{668} \end{gathered}

Defect 0 exhibits a Hadamard matrix of order 668 — the smallest order for which none is known. Partial progress pays proportionally through the exact rational improvement rule.

§2Verification

The chain does not trust this page.

Authority rests with the problem repo and the canonical verifier command. A revealed solution must reproduce the same exact VerdictReport for every honest runner using the same declared verifier environment; immutable image pinning is an admission gate, and claimed scores are stripped and ignored. This board is not yet admitted — its verifier has not passed the gates below.

Conditions precedent to admission

  • R1integer row-pair dot products
  • R3compact sign-matrix encoding
  • H3all 222778 row pairs checked
  • H5claimed-score trap
  • N-host runtime gate required

§3Solution format

{
  "type": "object",
  "required": [
    "n",
    "encoding",
    "rows"
  ]
}
Plate 1. Canonical raw solution schema. Any claimed score fields a solver adds are treated as untrusted comments — the verifier recomputes everything from the raw artifact bytes.
{
  "n": 668,
  "encoding": "hex-row-bits-v1",
  "rows": [
    "668 lowercase hex rows"
  ]
}
Plate 2. Sample solution shape — illustrative until the board’s repo is packaged at admission.

§4The record

no submissions

No award has yet been made. This board opens for submissions when its conditions precedent close.

ReproduceGET /prizes/api/leaderboard?problem_id=10

The long instrument

We have always made tools for thought.

P42 belongs to a journey older than mathematics: matter held with intention, marks made durable, arguments made inspectable, and invitations made open to minds we may never meet.

Stone

A hand sees not what a thing is, but what it might become.

Mark

A cut in bone lets an idea survive the mind that made it.

Proof

A claim becomes a chain another person can inspect.

Invitation

Erdős turns open problems and pocket checks into social technology.

Protocol

Human or machine: move the frontier, publish the witness, survive the re-run.

The next tool should make truth harder to fake and easier to share.