The homeless looking man was probably a paid messenger. given that said guy gave op fifty dollars, his pay would have to be significantly larger to ensure proper delivery. so, lets assume the original source of the note paid at least 150.00 with said delivery fee, sans labor costs for the creation of the puzzle... OK
now, the implication here is that someone thinks they will get a return on their investment. for this to be plausible, op would have to have been deliberately targeted these to receive the puzzle. handing these little surprises out to strangers would not result in a good rate of return.
now, if you are still following my train of thought, it would make sense to assume that these people must have been watching op to think he would be a good candidate to solve the puzzle. yet, if they were they seem to have misprofiled him as he was not able to solve the puzzle alone and so he resorted to posting on reddit.
now, there are a lot of smart people on Reddit, but what are the odds that such a random puzzle would be solved so quickly and for nothing more than karma?
as much as I would like to believe the story, it seems that the simpler explanation would be that it is a fabrication and a viral marketing campaign. this would explain how a fairly complicated puzzle was answered quickly and easily by some redditor, as smart as some of them are I think the odds of someone with both the required skills and willingness to work only for karma finding the post are fairly improbable.
in conclusion we can apply occam's razor to the above argument, to illustrate that it was probably not a bonafide event when compared to these alternate explanations: the man was legitimately crazy (what are the odds if encountering a crazy person with such skills?) or the most likely explanation, that this is a marketing campaign perhaps for a new book, movie, game show, or something else entirely
the argument that op fabricated the story to me is the most convincing, precise and logically sound theory
In order to further my procrastination this evening, I Googled the OP's username found a Twitter account that synced up with the OP's reddit interests (seems to be obsessed with magic the gathering), except that he's located in.... New Zealand. Not NYC.
Neither his Twitter or blog talk about this incident. Interestingly enough his first reddit submission was an AskReddit with a type of challenge/riddle. So its possible he just likes fabricating riddles for karma
" except that he's located in.... New Zealand. Not NYC"
His opening, way to specific, directions is what set off my spidey sense. As per some research that was done a while back (Only link I can find on short notice: http://cornellsun.com/section/news/content/2011/09/23/cornel...) to detect advertising plants, the plants would always try to build a scene of what happened ("I was on the 143 bus heading down Front Street when I saw the catching blue uniforms of the restaurant"), where as the real customers were more about emotions ("I felt ripped off, screw this place"). His attempt to build a scene right off the bat seems to fit this pretty well shrugs.
That article says the fake reviews are for Mechanical Turk -- it's unclear if they were reviews that were actually approved by a scammer, or if the researcher's just said "write me a fake review". There's a huge chance that their synthetic fake reviews don't resemble real deceptive reviews.
Also, the "real" reviews were just pulled from a site, without any research to verify their authenticity.
The article might not be the best (it wasn't the one I read a year or so ago), just a similar article I could find quickly. I don't think the original article was much better though =)
The required skills and desire to work only for karma are practically guaranteed on a site like reddit.
Also, if it's a marketing campaign, the op was exactly the right person to target as he exhibited best-case behavior for such a campaign. Going online for help to a highly viral community is precisely what you'd want as a marketer.
Now.
I'm still not sure I believe that somehow someone targeted him in such a way. That's the part that seems unlikely. The profiling is too perfect in this case.
There's a lot of people who code on any site like reddit. While people may have relevant skills, the likelihood of having the raw talent isn't that good.
It just took someone who recognized the type of cipher (which was apparently also named on the paper itself). That's virtually guaranteed in a worldwide community of geeky folk.
Agreed. The thing named itself as a ?FIDI cipher .
Just typing FIDI cipher into google will auto correct into BIFID cipher which ofcourse brings up any number of tools that will solve the cipher for you.
While its not 100% straight forward, its not exactly rocket surgery either.
I agree that it's probably a viral marketing campaign, but I think you may have the wrong idea about reddit users solving this. Looking at the ones who seem to have cracked it a few are accounts over a year old, which isn't bulletproof but still is usually a decent indicator that they're legit.
Also, I don't think this puzzle was all that out of reach, apparently the name of the cipher itself was encoded right in, along with various other hints in other languages. The cipher itself isn't all that complex either.
I agree with this. I am not surprised that some people could decipher the note in a matter of hours using online tools. Assuming that it couldn't have been done is the shakiest inference made by grandparent.
There was another high scoring post on Reddit less than a week ago with a similar premise: guy posts a coded note he claims to have seen placed in a dead drop [1]. This post definitely smells funny.
> what are the odds if encountering a crazy person with such skills?
Don't underestimate the odds a person with such skills becomes crazy
EDIT: I don't meant necessarily getting crazy because of the skills. For example I know a mathematician who had a stroke 5 years ago and recovered; he told that after the surgery, he now feels the urge of going out and watching all registration plates and play with those numbers. He says it's because he was doing this sort of thing the moment he got the stroke, so somehow his brain stuck into that. Honestly I have no idea, but the thing that strikes me more is his self consciousness of this situation. He suffers severe emotional and memory issues but he got a job and tries to get back his life.
Totally agree with this analysis. The Dark Knight Rises comes out the next day, July 20. Homeless guys handing our ciphered messages with $50 bills sounds like the sort of weird techno-cultural thing you might find in a Chris Nolan movie.
But it's not like that movie needs any more hype. Maybe this the first shot in a longer lead-up to a movie later in the summer.
You don't think that out of the millions of redditors, at least a few of them make a hobby out of breaking cyphers? It's not much different than lockpicking, which many hackers make a hobby out of.
There's even a subreddit for people who can't afford food and people buy each other pizzas. Assuming the probably or non-existence of any one type of person on Reddit is a fool's errand.
Why would you assume that someone will work on solving the puzzle only for karma? Curiosity, challenge and fun are also valid reasons, and I can see that a lot of people got curious about the message, and some of them took the challenge and had a good fun solving it, and maybe trolling the OP after that.
Comments
well, if the story is true...
The homeless looking man was probably a paid messenger. given that said guy gave op fifty dollars, his pay would have to be significantly larger to ensure proper delivery. so, lets assume the original source of the note paid at least 150.00 with said delivery fee, sans labor costs for the creation of the puzzle... OK
now, the implication here is that someone thinks they will get a return on their investment. for this to be plausible, op would have to have been deliberately targeted these to receive the puzzle. handing these little surprises out to strangers would not result in a good rate of return.
now, if you are still following my train of thought, it would make sense to assume that these people must have been watching op to think he would be a good candidate to solve the puzzle. yet, if they were they seem to have misprofiled him as he was not able to solve the puzzle alone and so he resorted to posting on reddit.
now, there are a lot of smart people on Reddit, but what are the odds that such a random puzzle would be solved so quickly and for nothing more than karma?
as much as I would like to believe the story, it seems that the simpler explanation would be that it is a fabrication and a viral marketing campaign. this would explain how a fairly complicated puzzle was answered quickly and easily by some redditor, as smart as some of them are I think the odds of someone with both the required skills and willingness to work only for karma finding the post are fairly improbable.
in conclusion we can apply occam's razor to the above argument, to illustrate that it was probably not a bonafide event when compared to these alternate explanations: the man was legitimately crazy (what are the odds if encountering a crazy person with such skills?) or the most likely explanation, that this is a marketing campaign perhaps for a new book, movie, game show, or something else entirely
the argument that op fabricated the story to me is the most convincing, precise and logically sound theory
In order to further my procrastination this evening, I Googled the OP's username found a Twitter account that synced up with the OP's reddit interests (seems to be obsessed with magic the gathering), except that he's located in.... New Zealand. Not NYC.
Neither his Twitter or blog talk about this incident. Interestingly enough his first reddit submission was an AskReddit with a type of challenge/riddle. So its possible he just likes fabricating riddles for karma
" except that he's located in.... New Zealand. Not NYC"
His opening, way to specific, directions is what set off my spidey sense. As per some research that was done a while back (Only link I can find on short notice: http://cornellsun.com/section/news/content/2011/09/23/cornel...) to detect advertising plants, the plants would always try to build a scene of what happened ("I was on the 143 bus heading down Front Street when I saw the catching blue uniforms of the restaurant"), where as the real customers were more about emotions ("I felt ripped off, screw this place"). His attempt to build a scene right off the bat seems to fit this pretty well shrugs.
That article says the fake reviews are for Mechanical Turk -- it's unclear if they were reviews that were actually approved by a scammer, or if the researcher's just said "write me a fake review". There's a huge chance that their synthetic fake reviews don't resemble real deceptive reviews.
Also, the "real" reviews were just pulled from a site, without any research to verify their authenticity.
The article might not be the best (it wasn't the one I read a year or so ago), just a similar article I could find quickly. I don't think the original article was much better though =)
Both of the "delverofsecrets" accounts share interest in magic, but this should not be surprising considering "Delver of Secrets" is a popular term in magic circles (https://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=%22delver+of+secrets%22&...).
The required skills and desire to work only for karma are practically guaranteed on a site like reddit.
Also, if it's a marketing campaign, the op was exactly the right person to target as he exhibited best-case behavior for such a campaign. Going online for help to a highly viral community is precisely what you'd want as a marketer.
Now.
I'm still not sure I believe that somehow someone targeted him in such a way. That's the part that seems unlikely. The profiling is too perfect in this case.
No the contention is that the op is behind the viral marketing campaign, not that he was targeted by one.
There's a lot of people who code on any site like reddit. While people may have relevant skills, the likelihood of having the raw talent isn't that good.
I don't understand what you mean by raw talent.
It just took someone who recognized the type of cipher (which was apparently also named on the paper itself). That's virtually guaranteed in a worldwide community of geeky folk.
Agreed. The thing named itself as a ?FIDI cipher .
Just typing FIDI cipher into google will auto correct into BIFID cipher which ofcourse brings up any number of tools that will solve the cipher for you.
While its not 100% straight forward, its not exactly rocket surgery either.
I agree that it's probably a viral marketing campaign, but I think you may have the wrong idea about reddit users solving this. Looking at the ones who seem to have cracked it a few are accounts over a year old, which isn't bulletproof but still is usually a decent indicator that they're legit.
Also, I don't think this puzzle was all that out of reach, apparently the name of the cipher itself was encoded right in, along with various other hints in other languages. The cipher itself isn't all that complex either.
Just being pedantic.
I agree with this. I am not surprised that some people could decipher the note in a matter of hours using online tools. Assuming that it couldn't have been done is the shakiest inference made by grandparent.
the argument that op fabricated the story to me is the most convincing, precise and logically sound theory
The UNIX timestamp is what led me to reach to same conclusion. I still might show up at the appointed hour...
I'd go if I was in NYC and had the time.
There was another high scoring post on Reddit less than a week ago with a similar premise: guy posts a coded note he claims to have seen placed in a dead drop [1]. This post definitely smells funny.
[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/w2231/reddit_i_th...
> what are the odds if encountering a crazy person with such skills?
Don't underestimate the odds a person with such skills becomes crazy
EDIT: I don't meant necessarily getting crazy because of the skills. For example I know a mathematician who had a stroke 5 years ago and recovered; he told that after the surgery, he now feels the urge of going out and watching all registration plates and play with those numbers. He says it's because he was doing this sort of thing the moment he got the stroke, so somehow his brain stuck into that. Honestly I have no idea, but the thing that strikes me more is his self consciousness of this situation. He suffers severe emotional and memory issues but he got a job and tries to get back his life.
You don't have to be that bright to write in code. Small kids manage it OK.
I'd find it harder to believe that a crazy person would have $50 they could spare.
Oh no, the odds of smart people becoming insane are very good!
It's the odds of encountering one on the street that are bad.
Totally agree with this analysis. The Dark Knight Rises comes out the next day, July 20. Homeless guys handing our ciphered messages with $50 bills sounds like the sort of weird techno-cultural thing you might find in a Chris Nolan movie.
But it's not like that movie needs any more hype. Maybe this the first shot in a longer lead-up to a movie later in the summer.
You don't think that out of the millions of redditors, at least a few of them make a hobby out of breaking cyphers? It's not much different than lockpicking, which many hackers make a hobby out of.
Evidence supporting this theory would be the existence of /r/cryptography.
There's even a subreddit for people who can't afford food and people buy each other pizzas. Assuming the probably or non-existence of any one type of person on Reddit is a fool's errand.
Why would you assume that someone will work on solving the puzzle only for karma? Curiosity, challenge and fun are also valid reasons, and I can see that a lot of people got curious about the message, and some of them took the challenge and had a good fun solving it, and maybe trolling the OP after that.
They're saying the OP came up with the puzzle in the pursuit of karma. Which would appear to have worked.
It has been solved.
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/weo8j/today_a_hom...
I am aware it has been "solved" -- my theory is that the solver is an insider working with the original poster.