Addition-multiplication chain defects start with an ω!

And yes, it limits to 1. That, although the authors presumably did not realize it, is to my mind the upshot of this recent paper by Bahig et al. (Yes, I've written to them about this fact.) In it, they determine all numbers whose shortest addition-multiplcation chains have at most 1 small step -- in other words, all numbers with addtion-multiplication chain defect at most 1! From their…