Easy 10 Points - Twenty F-ing Three!!!?

22+1

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1+22

11+11+1

This is a primer on the number 23, itself a prime number, a number divisible without a remainder by only itself and the number 1. The earth's axis is on a 23-degree tilt. Two divided by three gives you .666 repeating, which rounded off early gives you the Number of the Beast.

One of the earliest to subscribe to the 23 Enigma was beat poet William S. Burroughs. For him, it was not just the unusual frequency of the number; it was that in any coincidence he would find the number 23. When he was in Tangiers in the 1960s, Burroughs met one Captain Clark, a ferry captain who boasted of not having had an accident for 23 years. That night the boat sank, killing Clark and everyone aboard. Later that evening, Burroughs heard a radio broadcast about a plane crash. The pilot's name was Captain Clark. The flight number was 23. After that day, Burroughs kept a record of similar coincidences. Throughout his journal, 23 recurred over and over, like a footprint of chance, like the signature on the handiwork of fate.

The 23rd letter of the alphabet is W, a letter whose shape suggests two horns pointing down and three points up, like the devil-horns hand-sign thrown up at rock concerts. On the typewriter keyboard, W lies directly below the two and three. Are you feeling like me yet?

Parents each contribute 23 chromosomes of DNA at their child's conception.

That has made it hard to distinguish between deliberate and "authentic" 23s. A prison cell in A Clockwork Orange bears the number 23, which is also the number of humans killed by the androids in Blade Runner and the number of the bowling lane favoured by the Dude in The Big Lebowski: all 23. Chris Carter, the television maestro behind the mega-conspiracy series The X-Files named his production company Ten Thirteen: He was born on Oct. 13, the 13th day of the 10th month.

Cartoonist Jamie Hewlett regularly hid 23 in the background of his comic Tank Girl, before taking it to his current creation, the virtual band Gorillaz. In Gorillaz' autobiography,

Rise of the Ogre, bass player Murdoc takes the piss out of the enigma: "It takes 23 swift kicks with a Cuban-heeled shoe to boot the head off a yak.

Michael Jordan's jersey number for the Chicago Bulls was 23, a number he so thoroughly dominated that he and 23 became interchangeable in the hearts of his fans. English soccer-star David Beckham took up the number 23 in tribute to Jordan. His teammate Owen Hargreaves, the only Canadian player in this year's World Cup, also wore 23 when he played for a team in Munich. The number of the greatest sports legend of all time, Wayne Gretzky, was 99 -- and 99 is three to the power of two twice.

We are bombarded with numbers every day. Interest rates. Fatalities. Twin towers falling on the 11th day of the ninth month of 2001 (2 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 11 + 9 = 23!). What a relief it would be to know that these figures had some meaning, if only we could grasp it.

That is the best I can do.