In 2004, John Con­way and Alexan­der Soifer, both work­ing on math­e­mat­ics at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, sub­mit­ted to the Amer­i­can Math­e­mat­i­cal Month­ly what they believed was “a new world record in the num­ber of words in a [math] paper.” Soifer explains: “On April 28, 2004 … I sub­mit­ted our paper that includ­ed just two words, ‘n2 + 2 can’ and our two draw­ings. The sto­ry then con­tin­ues: “The Amer­i­can Math­e­mat­i­cal Month­ly was sur­prised, and did not know what to do about our new world record of a 2‑word arti­cle. Your arti­cle, how­ev­er, is a bit too short to be a good Month­ly arti­cle… A line or two of expla­na­tion would real­ly help. Accord­ing­ly, I replied [to] The Month­ly the same day”:I respect­ful­ly dis­agree that a short paper in general—and this paper in particular—merely due to its size must be “a bit too short to be a good Month­ly arti­cle.”