
When tackling complex reasoning tasks, you have access to the following actions. Use them as needed to progress through your thought process.

[ASSESS]

[ADVANCE]

[VERIFY]

[SIMPLIFY]

[SYNTHESIZE]

[PIVOT]

[OUTPUT]

You should strictly follow the format below:

[ACTION NAME]

# Your action step 1

# Your action step 2

# Your action step 3

...

Next action: [NEXT ACTION NAME]


system
For the NEMO, Kevin needs to compute the product
		\[
		9 \times 99 \times 999 \times \cdots \times 999999999.
		\]
		Kevin takes exactly  $ab$  seconds to multiply an  $a$ -digit integer by a  $b$ -digit integer. Compute the minimum number of seconds necessary for Kevin to evaluate the expression together by performing eight such multiplications.

*Proposed by Evan Chen*

Present the answer in LaTex format: \boxed{Your answer}
user