Expression "four times saltier than"?

[Yankee]

Hi Atomos

Welcome to the forum. It's good to have you here.

The thing that disturbs me a little about Nessie's original sentence is the addition of 'at least'. In this particular case, I would prefer the as ... as form of comparison:

" ... is at least four times as salty as ..."
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[MrPedantic]

It's an interesting question. Usually, "n times bigger than" seems to denote "n times as big as". But perhaps the teachers' thinking is as follows: