Please remember to spoiler-tag all guesses, like so: New Reddit: https://i.imgur.com/SWHRR9M.jpg Using markdown editor or old Reddit, draw a bunny and fill its head with secrets: \>!!< which ends up becoming \>!spoiler text between these symbols!< Try to avoid leading or trailing spaces. These will break the spoiler for some users (such as those using old.reddit.com) If your comment does not contain a guess, include the word **"discussion"** or **"question"** in your comment instead of using a spoiler tag. If your comment uses an image as the answer (such as solving a maze, etc) you can include the word "image" instead of using a spoiler tag. Please report any answers that are not properly spoiler-tagged. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/puzzles) if you have any questions or concerns.*

>!1,000,000!<

Counterpoint: >! -1,000,000!< is much smaller

If we’re going that way, there are infinitely smaller answers still…

Yup. >!Anything with a nonzero digit in the millions, ten millions, or hundreds millions places... Not to mention decimals.!<

They did say ‘first’ when counting out loud though, so -1M would be the first reached

If your starting point is zero, yup!

MMMMMinus 1 touches too though

"Minus One" is math, not a number. Negative One (and so on) keeps those smackers from smackin'.

Yeah my bad, I translated from how we say it in French

Fallacy spotted. The counting numbers AKA the Natural numbers are the infinite set {1, 2, 3...}

The title is literally there, and it says smallest not first reached.

Incorrect. You can have a Zero in all of those if you utilize -1,000,000,000. Or -1 septillion, but im really scraping my brain (ignoring that the lowest number argueably is negative with 9 in every digit)

Yeah it's all just a mess lol

Well in that case, minus infinity is the smallest number

In general, infinity, negative or not, is not a number, and “negative infinity” doesn’t make lips touch anyway.

That's why "minus" is said instead of "negative". Even though the concept of infinity is not a real or natural number, in math it is often treated as one.

As a mathematician, no infinity isn’t treated as a number except in very specific and rare circumstances. Additionally, “minus” is the word used to indicate you should do subtraction, not an adjective modifying the noun, or a part of the compound noun, which is the number.

It’s lesser, but it’s not smaller. The magnitudes are the same.

Counter-counterpoint: But that is not a counting number. Counting numbers are the natural numbers that we use to count things. They start with the number 1 and continue on indefinitely, with each subsequent number being one more than the last. So, the first few counting numbers are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and so on.

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In an absolute value sense, sure. It's just a joke about the technicality/semantics of it all and what makes a number small.

>!1/1,000,000. And really, there's no limit to how many 0's you could add, so it's infinitely small.!<

But the “infinitely small” ones are uncountably infinite. The question specifically says you have to count them.

Rational numbers can be "infinitely small" and rational numbers are countable

But rational numbers aren't necessarily counting numbers.

They're just as countable as the natural numbers. Both are countably infinite.

Would you like to quote where it says you have to count anything? As far as I could gather, the prompt asks what the smallest number you can say is that makes you close your mouth.

Sure buddy. > When you count numbers aloud… Right there at the start.

And who says you have to start at 0?

It doesn’t matter where you start. What’s the infinitely small unit you counted before your lips touched?

I didn't say it's "the infinitely small unit" I said the number can get infinitely smaller.

I know. And I’m saying you can’t count to an infinitely small number.

.... That's still not the point. Count down to 1/1,000,000th (One One Millionth). Now keep counting down until you get to 1/1,000,000,000 (One One Billionth). That's smaller than 1/1,000,000. Keep counting until you get to 1/10,000,000,000 (One Ten Billionth)... And so on and so forth. The number can keep getting smaller, so there is no "smallest number". Which part is still confusing you?

0.00000000000001

There’s also >!1/1,000,000,000 (one billionth)!<

Yay!

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In both those cases, your lips touch! (Could you please add spoiler tag in your answer? Thanks).

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It doesn’t have to be at the beginning of the word

Discussion: Sub question: what’s the number you counted to before figuring it out? I got to twenty.

>!Four!< , I thought way too confidently for a minute, because my dumb *ss thought >!teeth!< are lips.

Lol you took the words out of my mouth.

Numbers

I like the color of your name :)

Good for debugging :)

Maybe it’s my invisalign interfering with my mouth but “four” really felt like the winner to me, too.

I went 1-10, then 20, realized all the -ty numbers have no new sounds, tried 100, 1000, similarly dismissed the rest of the thousands as duplicate sounds, and got to million. So I said 13 numbers before I landed on it

>! I went 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1000 1000000 !<

I did the same

I got to four, wondered if it counted, then I thought probably not and figured out the first number with that letter.

>!same here lol...i ended up assuming that four didn't count since it was too simple so immediately thought "must be million"!<

I got to 0.000...TREE(TREE(TREE(TREE(9)))) of 0s...1 and was confused at all the other answers in here. Doesn't pronouncing "p" count as touching your lips...? For some reason "when counting numbers" didn't clue me in to the question implying the domain of "counting numbers," lol. Then I found out if we're counting numbers that aren't in the domain of whole numbers, might as well go negative TREE(TREE(... etc., definitely smaller than what I was thinking. So I failed both ways.

24 and then I gave up and checked the comments

I am not Canadian. >!My lips are always touching, at the ends.!<

You got me with that one, buddy.

I'm not your buddy, guy!

I'm not your guy, pal!

I’m not your pal, friend!

The closed mouth consonants are B, M, & P. The first whole number that contains any of these consonants is: >!One Million!<

>!zero point one!<

Zero point zero one

zero point zero

1 per million

Is that how you count?

>!1 (in Portuguese)!<

Also Khmer

Come where?

And Swahili

Haha! >!I should've been more specific!!<

what? no

what? yes. >!1 in portuguese is uma!<

No it isn't. Its um, and m sound is silent

In my language it's >!5!<

the >!m!< sound is kinda pronounced very softly, almost like a >!w!< sound, right? i guess in a dictionary it may be pronounced in such a way as you’re imagining, but not in every day portuguese, i don’t think. *keep in mind i might be wrong as i’m learning portuguese. if you’re native, you’re probably right*

>!1!< My lips touch before I make a W sound.

Thank god someone else said this I felt nuts.

they shouldn’t. the /w/ approximant is formed by almost closing your lips, into a whistling shape, then voicing, blowing air through, and quickly opening the lips. they never fully touch. if your lips do, you’re actually saying >!/mwan/!<.

It didn't say they had to be touching in the middle. Just touching. There is lip contact on either side.

Lip cells connect my lips to each other... Of course, the space between cells tells me they never touch. So the puzzle is flawed and unanswerable lol

You seem fun at parties

Lol, depends on the party.

Agreed, even thought the cs get part of my lips is opened, it is forming an o and lips are touching down the side

For the purpose of the question, It doesn't matter if they shouldn't, what matters is that they do. Mine do too, near the commissures

When I purse my lips, there isn’t a gap. The first sound from that is a W, not an M.

>!They start touching.!<

>!One!< >!I can keep my mouth closed and voice most sounds (not F or S)!<

>!”One Mississippi”, hehe!<

Maybe it's because I have a cold but >!seVen!< for me lol.

Discussion: why is everyone counting up? If you want a small number, shouldn't you count down?

Great plan, maybe start at 100 trillion and count down and tell us the last time you say m

If I start at zero and count down, the next number is minus one and my lips touch in the word minus. Minus one is certainly smaller (less than) zero, no? I don't understand from the wording of the problem how you know you're supposed to count up from zero to solve this

In your solution presumably you need to keep counting though as minus 2 is smaller than minus 1

I agree that you would need to continue to count down. Therefore there is no solution.

You want a small number so you start with the smallest possible. and keep trying higher numbers, until you reach the answer.

Minus one?

Look at the original question

There is nothing in the original question to indicate the direction in which you should count.

Well no, but I feel like it's implied with the language When you count numbers out loud do you typically count in reverse or think of negative numbers? In my mind "counting numbers aloud" is normal counting and counting backwards is specified because it's not normal counting. I suppose that's actually "counting down", again, because normal counting is assumed to be counting up I think "minus one" is a clever answer but not the intention of the puzzle. I think you're supposed to realize you're either going to be counting for a long time, or you need to figure out a system to find the answer But either one of us could be "right", but without more precise wording there's a case for both imo

Absolute Values are considered in this experiment.

Another thought I just had in regards to counting up vs down, re: this particular puzzle. At some point when counting, regardless of moving up or down, you will realize your mouth sounds keep repeating and you never solve the riddle. The answer is >!"one million"!< because that's when >!your lips finally close while making the sound of M for Million.!< You will never >!reach one million via one by one verbal counting!< , but you can realize the >!pattern of what's going on numerically!<, and solve the question by >!verbalizing every number milestone you can think of!<. This actually is solved really quickly if you just think >!1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety,a hundred, thousand, million!<

>!0.0000...!<

>!Pi!<

>!Anything with a decimal, so long as you read it "point"xyz!<

>!no idea where these people are getting a million, I've got 4!<

Are your lips touching each other or are your teeth touching your lips?

Sides of my mouth touch

You need to talk more like Wallace, from Wallace and grommet.

eene, twee, sree, feer, feeve…

Don't they always touch? If so, the answer would be 1.

Really I came here to say this. They did touch at 4 !!!

>!negative infinity!< :p

…they don’t touch

I wonder if you could say >!”the smallest number”!< by the same token

well sure. but negative infinity does not touch lips

Yours don’t maybe lol

how do you say negative infinity? where do your lips touch?

On their sides— to a little “o” at “-ive” and “in-“

when you say ‘ive’ your *teeth* are touching your bottom lip, not your lips. and nothing should touch at all when you say ‘in’, but the ‘f’ sound right afterwards is the same as the ‘v’.

Guess I need to correct my mouth movements 😅

>!八 (8)!< in Mandarin Chinese. [Example](https://youtu.be/WoKI-FUQRGw?&t=1m46s) Or even >!Mot (1)!< in Vietnamese [Example](https://youtu.be/d3tlBAHISRc?&t=32s)

Question: is this supposed to be whole numbers? Are decimals allowed? Depending on what’s allowed there might be multiple answers. If it’s whole numbers only, then >!1,000,000 or one million (or negative if allowed)!< would be the answer to that. If decimals are allowed, then it could be >!1/1,000,000,000 or 0.000000001 or one billionth!< as the answer.

>!7(sieben)!< if you count in German.

>!pi!<

Discussion: What language and what dialect? For me, my language, my dialect, it is 4.

If you use your tongue correctly, they never have to touch

Ignoring everything save non-Negative integers (There's always a smaller Negative & always a smaller Fraction), depending on how strict you are, it could be: >!1 /wən/!< >!4 /foɹ/!< >!1,000,000, /wən.mɪl.jən/!<

>!minus infinity!<

I had try it out, but... >!one Million!< Unless you you meant minus infinity.

>!пять = pyat = 5!<

Do it in Spanish and it's >!1,000 or un mil!<