Syzygies of Prym and paracanonical curves of genus 8

By analogy with Green's Conjecture on syzygies of canonical curves, the Prym-Green conjecture predicts that the resolution of a general level p paracanonical curve of genus g is natural. The Prym-Green Conjecture is known to hold in odd genus for almost all levels. Probabilistic arguments strongly suggested that the conjecture might fail for level 2 and genus 8 or 16. In this paper, we present three geometric proofs of the surprising failure of the Prym-Green Conjecture in genus 8, hoping that the methods introduced here will shed light on all the exceptions to the Prym-Green Conjecture for genera with high divisibility by 2.