Verbal subgroups of absolutely free groups of different ranks (Q1911786)

A theorem is proved, which was announced by the author [in Proceedings 11th All-Union symposium on group theory, Sverdlovsk (1989; Zbl 0691.20002)]. It is shown that there exists a word \(w\) in three variables such that the shortest nontrivial element of the verbal subgroup of the free group \(F_3\) of rank 3 defined by \(w\) is shorter than that of \(F_2\) defined by the same word. Clearly, this gives an affirmative answer to Problem 19 by \textit{H. Neumann} [Varieties of Groups (Springer, 1967; Zbl 0251.20001)].