It used to be that M.I.T was filled with code-breakers. Part of the movie A Beautiful Mind takes place there and in real life it’s always had close ties with the military and intelligence agencies. Tech companies also like to recruit there, and Google is no exception.
In search of some beautiful minds, Google has been putting up signs around the M.I.T campus with a code that say, “If you can figure this out, you may have a future with Google.” If they crack the code, which is a fairly simple substitution cipher (or not), it reveals a phone number where they can leave their contact information.
So far, no M.I.T. students have been able to crack the code, or at least they haven’t bothered to leave a voicemail. Maybe they need some help. The first person to crack the code gets a TechCrunch T-shirt, or maybe a job at Google if you call the number and leave your name.
We have a winner: Actually two, it was a team effort. Scott Kyle did the set-up and Hakan came up with the final answer: 617-639-0570. The number is a substitution cipher that you get by writing out 0-9 then A-Z, then using the keyword “JOBS” to shift the letters.
Interestingly, there is also a second solution (617-274-8660), which leads to another non-Google recruiting number. That one might just be a red herring, or a way to weed out the semi-smart folks who couldn’t come up with the harder solution.
I think I know why no one at MIT has called into the number… it looks like they put the sign in the gym.
Chuck should get a t-shirt just for that comment . . .
hahahaha
Hahahaha
Ahahahaha…totally with Rich at LEAST a techcrunch T-shirt for ChuckM
definitely.
LOL++;
No it is not MIT, it is Princeton
LOL#
lol
Lol.
blatant jockism!
lol
nice
Chuck gets my vote for receiving a t-shirt. That was brilliant.
+1 for tshirt 4 ChuckM
Realtime smart.
t-shirt for chuck! LOL!
++
Hahahaha! Agree! Shirt for ChuckM.
Another TC fake post which is similar to http://www.tech...-san-francisco/
that they said winners will get t-shirts but they never announced who won….
hahahaaahahaa… in the gym. they have sport program(s)?
That’s because the career fair is held in the gym. Seriously guys…
what a buzz killer. we already know that (some of us atleast), but it was still funny to think of it the way chuck wrote it because i know that’s what automatically popped in my head when i saw the posted pic. i thought the exact same thing so kudos to chuck m, i hope he gets a shirt, and thank you for making me laugh cause that shit was hilarious. har har all the way funny. stop killing the fun.
yeah, well, it’s the gym, but that’s where the career fair was held… so it was the only day we could see it
but the direction of traffic was not optimal for anybody to see that. i walked through that door twice and didn’t see the sign.
Cool.
Interesting I am going to have a crack at this..
But that’s only for fun..Since a job at Google would be big no-no as it would impair innovation
if you can figure this out, you may have a problem with the NSA
I’m opening this country’s first organic strip club featuring range free dancers
f chuck. free t-shirt for dr rand pink.
Should I give the solution for fun? It seemed so simple to me. I am not really interesting in working for Google.
“I am not really interesting in working for Google because I can do math but I can’t speaking”
And yeah, would love the solution, I’ll take the job…
Just cracked it…
1-800-Free-Press
Erick , I think ‘A Beautiful Mind’, takes place at Princeton – showing the life of economist John Nash. The film ‘21′ takes place in M.I.T.
It takes place at Both Princeton and M.I.T. From IMDB:
After the conclusion of Nashs studies as a student at Princeton, he accepts a prestigious appointment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), along with his friends Sol and Bender. Russell Crowe as John Nash. Russell Crowe as John Nash.
Five years later while teaching a class on Calculus at MIT, he places a particularly interesting problem on the chalkboard that he dares his students to solve. When his student Alicia Larde comes to his office to discuss the problem, the two fall in love and eventually marry.
Eric,
More than the movie, had you quoted from the book, A Beautiful Mind, it would have looked more authentic.
From the book, as Nash is rejected from Princeton, he has to take up a position in MIT.
cracked it
1-800-273-TALK
Uh, thats the national suicide prevention hotline.
did you leave your details for that google job?
lol dont even attempt for that one.
It means: “If you can figure this out, you may have a future with Google”. How do I get my TechCrunch T-shirt?
Maybe this is a sign that the economy is getting better since the students aren’t that desperate to waste time on this silly riddle just to get their resume ahead on the list.
Enough people from around here get jobs (at Google too) without the need for riddles like this, and they rather be spending their time doing important globally relevant things like put a police car on top of the MIT dome, drop a piano from a dorm roof, or just watch Rocky Horror for the 1000th time..
(I’m at MIT)
Ditto Nadav. It’s a bit presumptuous and arrogant “Crack this and you MAY have a future at Google?”. No thanks, we are at MIT and we don’t really have a dearth for nicer, smarter less arrogant people who want to hire us, when we are not founding our own companies.
Lot more fun working on the dome hacks instead of this silly riddle!
Yeah, I kind of agree that Google is kinda getting full of themselves. Just like Microsoft did.
I think it should be ‘dearth of’, not ‘for’.
ohh! you’re so cool (that’s sarcasm) be productive idiot!
I think that’s a piss poor reason not to take a shot at it. Just because you’re at MIT doesn’t (or at least shouldn’t) mean you get a job anywhere you want. I believe that, yes, you probably could get a job at Google if you wanted to without solving the code, but they’re trying to introduce some sport into the matter and make things fun.
To think outside the box is a good thing. They’re not trying to have you solve some meaningless riddle with the hopes that you may one day “work at google.” Maybe theyr’e hoping one day you’ll stop just thinking you’re smarter than everyone else and actually prove it.
Oh dear, I seem to have misspelled some things within my rant.
s/theyr’e/they’re/ and any other mistakes I may have made (I want to catch them before someone goes OH DEAR YOU CAN’T FORM A GOOD ARGUMENT BECAUSE YOU CAN’T SPELL).
I think you are the only reasonable person in this entry, 100 points for you Mr Hays, you’ve said it.
Code broken: http://twitter....atus/4149170306
lol, good job!
Schweet! +1
lolllllllll
Don’t think too hard. Don’t look beyond the obvious! Don’t assume it’s a simple substitution cypher.
The answer is 866-688-6232 (which are the first 10 numbers that appear in the puzzle.)
Fax your resume to that number.
Erick, send me an email, and I’ll tell you where to mail my T-shirt.
That’s the answer that I came up with as well, within the first few minutes, but I don’t know of its actual authenticity. So I’m working on other possible solutions.
A beautiful mind didn’t take place at MIT….John Nash = Princeton.
You know, I had this thought also, but I wasn’t 100% positive so I did a quick check over at Wikipedia to prevent myself from from incorrectly spouting off and looking like an ass.
Um. He was on the faculty at M.I.T. from 1951 through 1959 — http://nobelpri...sh-autobio.html
You are correct, but the majority of “A Beautiful Mind” took place at Princeton where he did his Doctoral work.
Actually, I suppose a “majority” is probably incorrect.
just stop.
From a HR Standpoint, I would think that such a qualifier would certainly weed out some less then motivated persons.
easy, the code is 77556722063, you huys can have the job at google thanks, i’m from a third world country, they’ll never give it to me.
peace
It’s not a simple substitution cipher. The sixth encrypted word is “AA”. In English, there is no two-letter word where both letters are the same.
thats what I was looking at as well
Maybe substituting or shifting the spaces around?
Or perhaps repeated numbers
I’m pretty sure that would be an insult.
Unless AA represent numbers…
You’re assume spaces are unencrypted.
And that it’s read top-to-bottom and left-to-right
and word wrap is turned on
And that we’re still living on planet earth and this is viewed from an inertial reference frame.
AA is a Scrabble word.
aa aas \ n pl. -S rough, cindery lava
(source. http://www.hasb...n_US/search.cfm)
How do you know the spaces themselves aren’t supposed to be substituted for letters/numbers?
The code:
685112114912
what the hell is wrong with all these pseudo-geeks? you think you’re all better, you use google, windows, mac, etc, and you criticize them, can you do anything better? is it envy? two great people Sergey Brim and Larry page, people who i’m 100% sure all of you who criticize and say how easy, why do i need it, uhhhh! i’m at MIT! i bet my 3rd world country salary, you guys would’ve treated them like shit. Because it’s the people who criticize the most, the ones who do nothing about anything. May the one who has a top ranked company based on searching the internet cast the first stone.
Wow! I knew that Britain’s Communist health care was destroying the country but I had no idea you guys had been reduced to a third world country.
If you figure this out, you may have a future as a Zodiac Killer.
If you figure this out, you may have a future on the Death Star.
If you figure this out, you may have a future as Superman.
If you figure this out, you may have a future in a Techcrunch t-shirt
I figured it out. Can you send me my shirt?
It’s not a substitution cipher. And apparently it’s the “second, more difficult problem.” And they’re not actually google jobs.
Either you found this before me (if so then why not post the number? I imagine you would.)
or
You are one of the people behind this hoax (encouraging people to keep looking for the number to not place attention on yourself).
Hmmmm?
What the hell! I can’t break that.
-.-
Well, it’s not ROT13. (can ROT13 even have numbers in)
1-800-GOOG-411
Hmmm..called the number I decrypted and it was a fax machine…maybe I sould send my resume
Who the heck has a fax machine, anymore? The least they could do is set it up with GoogleVoice and have instructions on where to email the resume.
So you decrypted the number that wa sin plain site? Sorry thats not really decrypting. I think thats called reading sequestially
LOL, if it’s a fax machine then its actually facebook
google “reverse lookup”
The “AA”, maybe it has to do with the position of each letter too.
The number I called actually had a message starting with “Congratulations.”
ok, but everyone is forgetting: Chuck should definetely get a t-shirt for his comment !
Here’s the phone number:
866-688-6232 x513
(Just follow the numbers in their natural order)
That’s a fax number…
I am getting the same busy message from:
617 274 8659 (the number I figured from the picture)
and
866 688 6235 (which logically you would think this is the number is sequence “866 688 6232″, but by being a fax number, common knowledge says that going up or down on the last digit is an actual phone line. So replacing the last number with either a “5″ “1″ or “3″ was figured and I get the same busy message with both numbers above.
Perhaps it’s a Vonage error on my line
So far I got: 617 274 865
I dont have time to find the last number
617 274 8658 is also a fax number…
I think I am on a good on this since MIT is in boston?
Just count the amount of characters with empty spaces a a break then count how many empty spaces collectivly for the last number = a fax line.
Sorry guys, fax belong to “Law Boston Properties”
Correction to my original number, i wanted to post “617 274 8659″
number says it is busy.
How are you getting this number?
I’m guessing that maybe you’re doing this by adding up the number of characters before each space (not including linebreaks? – this isn’t a substitution cipher btw)
But in that case it would be 617-274-866_
Yes this is what I am doing and your right, the corrected outcome is 617-274-866_
What the fu#*$%(…
617-274-8660
Eric call that number
Will
STR3EM.com
no number = 0
As the MIT guys said above, this is simply a riddle, no subtraction cypher, no vodoo.
Could it be someone else besides Google doing this?
Thanks Aleksey,
Do I get a shirt or can I pitch a product instead?
Close mouth don’t get fed.
Well in the end I hope this is really the number (it is in that riddle) and it feels great to get “something” out of it.
Just goes to show you why riddle-based hiring is a bad idea. He can solve the riddle, but he can’t count.
Yeah but was the first to get that is was a 617 number and not the obvious 866 number.
Google could not afford me lol.
And now “he can figure out the riddle but his grammar is awful”, lol, sorry, I am posting these things while doing a million other things.
+1 617 274-8660 works. You got it William!
Yep that’s it William You got it… Offer $9.5/HR
ILL TAKE IT WOOOHOOOO!
These are imposers.
FAIL.
Yeah, how dare they impose upon you! What an imposition!
you don’t need time to solve for the last number — there are only 10 options — dial all 10; shouldn’t take more than ten minutes
1-800-matt-res
Leave of the last ’s’ for suck it!
I’ve texted ChaCha to get me the answer.
LOL. That made me laugh.
i’ll let you discover the answer
http://rumkin.c...m/tools/cipher/
But who is reaching out to the janitors at MIT?
Forget A Beautiful Mind, Google, do some Good Will Hunting!
awesome, I called the decrypted number, told em I want the job and they said ok with no questions asked!
yay!
just wonder why the said I’ll have to pay for my own uniform… weird
Maybe Google just needs to use their own search engine to find…and search for those who want to work for them.
this is the address on Google Maps…perhaps the 513 is the Suite #.
http://bit.ly/g_code
Instead of posting phone and fax numbers, post your solution plus explain0r. Internet is here to learn something. Not just reading stupid #’s.
Remember, there is no where written in the banner that a telephone number is hidden in the message.
You have that information, not the people who are seeing the banner – so you have an added advantage
My thought is
Convert ASCII -> binary/hex
Then run that in a simulator (I’d try SPIM first)
aa and ii both occur. Neither can be the word Google, with the two oo = aa or ii. Thus, one of the is probably part of the phone number 800-xxx-xxxx with 00 = aa or ii. I tried transpositions of the alphabet+number series to match this up and could not see anything. Also note the blank space has the highest frequency, which usually gets assigned E, but again this turns out nothing.
This is probably a dead-end – but there are 11 columns and Google phone numbers are often 11 digits. Most start:
1 (650) 253-XXXX
Right. We’re most likely looking for either a 10 or 11 digit number. We have 55 characters, 8 of which are spaces. Since that gives us 47 non-space characters, we can infer that we’re looking for an 11 digit number where each digit is represented by 5 characters and the spaces are also encrypted.
First person to crack it will get a TechCrunch T-Shirt and possibly a job at Google. The former guy working the job submitted a screenshot of [REDACTED] to TechCrunch earlier last week for a TechCrunch T-Shirt and got canned this past Saturday.
I just looked at only the numbers (”figure this out”), and got 866 6886 23 25 13.
Then I guessed that 13 might be either the 2nd number, like 2313, or 13 might be some code to enter after the number ending in 2325.
First option, both numbers gave me a fax like sound.
2nd option, nothing happened when I entered 13 as a code.
Anybody else tried in this angle?
I meant 866 688 6 232 / 513, or one number with 513 as some menu options.
First number goes to fax.
The 866 688 6513 goes to Chase.
Thanks.
I cracked it and it says: GOOGLE IS ONE EVIL ASS MONOPOLY
If you look at the code there are 11 characters across including spaces and 5 lines. A phone number normally has 10 digits minus the 1, so that would mean there are 2 numbers per line.
That’s the innovative way to hire talents…
I love it. This is what makes me laugh and enjoy my day.
I bing it bing say that “code” is some crap from google
i got this as the code:
06038986038
This # give u a number & answering machine….took me 1.5 hrs toget……we’ll…..have to call collect from Canada and left name “Anthony”…… Is this code wrong?
Chg the 0 at beginning to a 1 and then see when u dial the #…….interesting to see who will win shirt!