Earlier today, internet business culture behemoth, TechCrunch, posted a riddle for its millions of devoted followers. Branded as a heretofore unbroken code, the decipherer was promised Good Will Hunting-like stardom and a potential job with Google, no doubt as the Alpha Team Leader of a Top Secret Super-Genius Infiltration Training Program. Not to mention a TechCrunch t-shirt…
These prizes were more than enough to coax thousands of readers to devote their early afternoon naptimes in search of the key to the cipher. Even Yours Truly could not resist the lure of an unbreakable code that had previously foiled unworthy MIT twerps.
And so we crunched. We juxtaposed. We rearranged, substituted, and counted. Early discoveries of a phone voice mail belonging to the Google central nervous system were quickly debunked. Other phone numbers surfaced, seemingly belonging to a Boston law firm. I, personally, came up with several fax numbers and the contact phone for a Bay Area company called Integral.
And in the end, both on our worksheets and in the post’s comment thread, it was revealed that the correct answer belonged to a voice mail that belonged not to Google, but to some network-marketing scum looking for a few sharp minds to enslave and ultimately impoverish with yet more promises of unattainable riches.
Sadness. On several levels. First of all, that a first-rate website could so easily be scammed by snake-oil salesmen into putting out an internet call-to-arms. Secondly, though, that this vast resource of intelligentsia all over the world can only be harnessed by a virtual prankster.
Is there no cause more worthy of this kind of collective mental effort? Can’t we use these kind of thought experiments to do something useful, like figure out the Unified Field Theory or balance the budget, or create a Phantom Zone to exile all News Corp Executives into oblivion?
Probably not for awhile. As it seems that TechCrunch will be thought of as the Website that Cried Wolf for the foreseeable future. For shame.
PS: For you super nerds still keen on finding the answer… Here is my original worksheet…
Occurences:
1 = 1 6
2 = 2 8
3 = 2 2
4 = 0 3
5 = 1 1
6 = 4 5
7 = 0 4
8 = 3 7
9 = 0 9
A = 3 A
B = 0 I
C = 0 L
D = 2 M
E = 1 Q
F = 2 D
G = 0 F
H = 1 J
I = 3 O
J = 2 R
K = 0 E
L = 3 H
M = 3 N
N = 1 S
O = 2 T
P = 0 U
Q = 3 X
R = 2 B
S = 1 C
T = 1 G
U = 1 K
V = 0 P
W = 0 V
X = 1 W
Y = 0 Y
Z = 0 Z
55 possible characters. 8 gaps.
gaps at 7, 9, 17, 20, 28, 33, 42, 49
gaps of gaps: 2 8 3 8 5 9 7 BHCHEIG
each line gaps: 7,9, 6,9 6, 11, 9, 5
gaps of gaps 2, 3, 3, 3, 5, 2, 4
7 9
6 9
6 11
9
5
QLQ6 6I1 R8I3 Fx IA3J
8386 691 9893 69 9131
number of characters
6,1,2 break or, excluding breaks: (617) 274 -8660
5,2,2 break the final zero representing the last needed digit
5, 4, break with no characters following the phrase.
8, 2 break
4, 6 end
Update:
Never mind. The thing was recently solved. It was a substitution cipher that went something like this:
Code for translation:
0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ (JOBS)
456789ABCDE2FGHIJKL0MNOP1QRS3TUVWXYZ (0123)
The result:
CONGRA T UL ATION SK EE PSEAR CHIN GORCALL6 17 6390 570×10
CONGRATULATIONS KEEP SEARCHING OR CALL 617 639 0570 (extension 10)
Google Jobs answers that call 🙂
via fivetechsoft
