[FOM] Knot theory puzzle

[Thomas Forster]

Just been having morning chat with Raymond Lickorish (he's the one who 
put the `l' in `Homfly')  He mentioned a beguiling open problem in knot 
theory:

	``Is the crossing number of the sum of two 
	   knots the sum of the crossing numbers?''


   I'm not asking if anyone knows the answer to this - they don't! -  but
what is the quantifier complexity??

       Thomas Forster


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  URL: www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~tf  tel: 01223-337981 and 020-7882-3659