The aim this paper is to present an answer to Problem 1 of Monk [10], [11]. We do this by proving in particular that if μ is a strong limit singular cardinal, $\theta ={\left(2^{cf\left(\mu \right)}\right)}^{+}$ and $2^{\mu }={\mu }^{+}$ then there are Boolean algebras ${𝔹}_1,{𝔹}_2$ such that $c\left({𝔹}_1\right)=\mu ,c\left({𝔹}_2\right)<\theta butc({𝔹}_1*{𝔹}_2)={\mu }^{+}$. Further we improve this result, deal with the method and the necessity of the assumptions. In particular we prove that if $𝔹$ is a ccc Boolean algebra and ${\mu }^{{\beth }_{\omega }}\le \lambda =cf\left(\lambda \right)\le 2^{\mu }$ then $𝔹$ satisfies the λ-Knaster condition (using the “revised GCH theorem”).

Answering a question raised by Luis Pereira, we show that a continuous tree-like scale can exist above a supercompact cardinal. We also show that the existence of a continuous tree-like scale at ℵω is consistent with Martin’s Maximum.