We Solved the Proof from PROOF and It Turns Out It’s Just “80085”

by Edward Precht. @pertoltprecht.

NEW YORK, NY – The secret to a great piece of art is a great, unanswerable question, and, in the case of Proof – now playing at the Booth Theatre – that question is the authenticity of a newly-discovered mathematical formula. Earlier today, the brightest minds behind The Broadway Beat announced they’d solved said formula, and it turns out it’s “80085,” also known as the numeric spelling of the English word “boobs.”

“Its simplicity is in its complexity,” a Beat spokesperson said of the byzantine formula. “We ran through it a few times, and it could’ve been any number of, well, numbers. For a while we got 69 and 420 and 5318008 which is just, it’s, it spells ‘boobies’ when you turn the calculator upside-down. But we never considered that it’s just ‘boobs.’ It’s just ‘boobs,’ guys. It’s just ‘boobs.’”

Still reeling from the death of her genius father (Marvel’s Don Cheadle), young Catherine (Letterboxd’s Ayo Edebiri) must prove she is the mind behind a potentially world-changing theorem found in one of her dad’s old notebooks. And though it is never revealed in the play, The Broadway Beat was able to solve this proof in less than a month.

The cast all but confirmed this incredible solution.

“David Auburn would never tell us outright,” said Edebiri. chuckling to herself a lil. “We’d ask and he’d always giggle and go ‘Oh, you’ll get it,’ which eventually got him kicked out of rehearsals. And when I tried solving it on my own, I got 5318008 which is just, it’s, it spells ‘boobies’ when you turn the calculator upside-down. But one day, Cheadle cracked it, and I’m impressed The Brogway Bean or whatever was able to do the same.”

When asked why they’d spend their time on this theorem, The Broadway Beat spokesperson shrugged and said, “There’re so many unsolved Easter eggs in some of theatre’s seminal canon. For instance, did you know that the graph in Stoppard’s Arcadia spells out ‘tig ol’ biddies?’ Or that ‘The Continental Principalities’ in Angels in America refer to a pair of tig ol’ biddies?”

Since, The Beat has announced it won’t stop until all of Broadway’s proofs are found.

“After all,” they said, “there’s something awfully phallic about The Balusters’ balusters.”