# February 2017 golf

How many minutes are there in February 2017?

This is "puzzling golf". The shortest correct answer wins.

PS: The puzzle is not so much to compute the result, but rather to express it in fewer than 5 digits.

• Please do not use tags that don't exist unless you're really sure that they need to be created.
– Deusovi
Feb 17 '17 at 16:04
• Sorry. The tags were accepted by SE so I thought they existed. Feb 17 '17 at 16:07
• To downvoters: don't forget to revise your vote when you have seen the answer. Feb 17 '17 at 16:21
• Feb 17 '17 at 18:01

As pointed out, there are

28 days x 24 hours x 60 minutes = 40,320 minutes in February 2017.

This can be expressed as:

(4x7) days x (3x8) hours x (1x2x5x6) minutes = 8! minutes.

• Correct! And I decided to accept this answer because it is more explicit. Feb 17 '17 at 16:36

I can do it in just 2 symbols (excluding the word minutes):

8! minutes

• Yess! This is the inteded answer. Thank you. Feb 17 '17 at 16:29

The shortest answer I can think of:

0

Because

The word "minutes" does not appear in "February 2017"

But if you're looking to express the actual duration of the month in minutes, 40320, how about this:

10

using

base 40320.

• 1st answer: No. Some calculation is required to solve the puzzle. 2nd: giving the base would be part of the answer. Feb 17 '17 at 16:19
• Then how is this lateral thinking and not formation of numbers?
– Matt
Feb 17 '17 at 16:21
• I think you are right. It is not lateral thinking any more after I explained the puzzle in in the way to express the answer. Feb 17 '17 at 16:27
• If only there were enough unicode characters to express it in base 40321 Feb 18 '17 at 2:04
• @Xavon_Wrentaile: Aren’t there? (Or was that the point?)
– Ry-
Feb 18 '17 at 21:36

The Prime Factors :

$2^7\times 3^2\times 5\times 7$
(without the exponents it's 4 numbers)

Or HEXA powa :)

9D80

• Because it's the first four primes: $7$,$2$,$1$,$1$ (just the exponents). Feb 18 '17 at 18:16
• well, 1 is not a prime...
– Tom
Feb 18 '17 at 18:41
• I was listing the exponents for the first four primes. 2^7, 3^2, 5^1, 7^1. Feb 18 '17 at 18:58
• Ok I didn't understand what you were asking, if the question is why the first 4 primes, here is The Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic : Every positive integer greater than one can be written uniquely as a product of primes, with the prime factors in the product written in order of nondecreasing size.
– Tom
Feb 18 '17 at 21:22
• You said "without the exponents it's 4 numbers", but discarding the first 4 primes would lose less information (if you know it's exponents, exponents for primes is a reasonable deduction). Feb 19 '17 at 10:14