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Prime-Time Ant (Posted on 2010-10-05) Difficulty: 3 of 5
An ant is placed on a large sheet of graph paper on which numerous concentric squares have been marked in ink, indicating each successive odd prime starting with 3. The ant starts moving North, from the centre square of the 3x3 block, and will alternately;
1. Turn right when it reaches an ink line (which seems like a ‘wall’ to the ant); and
2. Resignedly clamber over the ‘wall’ and continue to scurry forwards in its current direction until confronted by another wall.

Hence the first few moves of the ant will be: North 1 step, turn right, East 2 steps, turn right, South 4 steps, turn right, West 7 steps, turn right, and so on.

Question: How many steps will the ant have had to take by the time it climbs over the 10,000th ‘wall’?

No Solution Yet Submitted by broll    
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  Subject Author Date
re: computer-aided solutionbroll2010-10-06 12:31:48
Solutioncomputer-aided solutionCharlie2010-10-06 02:50:37
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