The author of a book I am reading asked a mathematician what it feels like to be sixty. He wrote
He replied, “Sixty, sandwiched between two primes, has the property that no smaller number has more distinct prime factors. Other than that, nothing special.”
But something is wrong here, right? The prime factors of 60 are 2, 2, 3, and 5, so the distinct prime factors are 2, 3, and 5. Therefore, 30 is the smallest number with three distinct prime factors.*
Write a function to compute the smallest number with n distinct prime factors. The output should be a character string.
*It’s also sandwiched between two primes, but that does not matter for this problem.
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Last Solution submitted on Jun 05, 2026

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Tim Chris Cleveland George Berken CXD

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