A few months back, we did a prank on Harvard and MIT, where the Massachusetts Institute of Technology came out the decisive winner.
Most MIT students appreciated this ... except the Department of Admissions.
Shortly thereafter, the MIT Admissions department put up this challenge on their blog:
Your prank was deemed "lame sauce" by the majority of people who saw it and we expected better from [ZUG] ... as such, if within 6 months time you have not improved upon your "prank" with something much more spectacular and actually blogworthy, we will be forced to show you what a real hack is.
Wait a minute. Is MIT actually challenging ZUG to a prank war? Well, get ready to be liberally drizzled with "lame sauce," Massachusetts Institute of Troglodology, because here it comes.
THE PRANK
We wanted to see how smart MIT students really are, so we devised a puzzle in the form of a Google Jobs ad (which we knew most MIT students would not be able to resist).
We designed the puzzle to have two answers: an easy answer, and a more difficult one. The object was to see how many MIT students would settle for the easy answer.
SOLUTION #1 (EASY)
You could use a simple substitution cipher, like the "cryptograms" found on the funnies pages of most newspapers. You could work it out the hard way, or you could just use the keyword of "JOBS," which was actually printed on the poster itself.
The answer key.
The hint.
Working out this puzzle gave you a congratulations message, plus a phone number to call (with a phony extension, x10). Calling into the phone number played a message:
Congratulations! You solved the puzzle. Keep searching, or leave us your name, telephone number, and a description of the most challenging problem you've ever solved. Thanks for your interest in Google Jobs!
The "keep searching," as well as the bogus "extension 10," were clues leading to the second problem.
SOLUTION #2 (MORE DIFFICULT)
The letters on the sign were grouped strangely. By counting the number of digits (six in the first cluster, one in the next, etc.), you would get the first nine digits of another phone number. Multiplying by ten ("x10" from the previous message) would complete the phone number. When you called this number, you received a more mysterious message:
Congratulations! You solved the more difficult puzzle. Please leave your name and number, and we'll get back to you.
With our puzzle in place, we were now ready to blanket the MIT campus with the ad.
Please continue on to Part 2!
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