Mystery Company Recruiting Talent With a Puzzle

An anonymous reader writes "Google has previously used coding competitions to locate top talent. In a new twist on the idea, an anonymous tech company is posting a help-wanted ad that challenges developers to find out who the company is. A little digging and text mashing reveals a website containing a Web 2.0 puzzle that makes notpron look like child's play. So, fellow developers, who is this company, and, well, what is the significance of the date '01-18-08?'" Update: 12/12 20:20 GMT by KD : Replaced link to a removed Craigslist ad with a mirror.

Comments

One word...

[DigiWood]

Cloverfield. 01-18-08 is the release date.

Re:One word...

[davester666]

The date the company goes under?

Here's a brain teaser...

[__aaclcg7560]

If the mysterious company makes you jump through hoops to get into the door, will they jump through hoops to make you feel like a valued employee or just break out the whips since you're lucky to have the job?

Save some time

[madsheep]

If anyone wants to save some time (like 30-60 seconds) with Base64 to Ascii:

eyAnOicgPT4gJycsICcgJyA9PiAnLScsICdzXG4nID0+ICdzLmNvbVxuJyB9 converts to { ':' => '', ' ' => '-', 's\n' => 's.com\n' }

Base64

[HateBreeder]

The clue is base 64 for:
{ ':' => '', ' ' => '-', 's\n' => 's.com\n' }

Now, if you notice [RFC 3548] later changed to 4648:
  "CB-" ":" ":" ":"
              ":"

my 30-seconds attempt is over.

Re:Base64

[jcaldwel]

Its a find-and-replace that turns the title:
Wanted: Master Software Developers

Into:
http://wanted-master-software-developers.com/

... and the test continues...

Re:Base64

[Compuser]

OK, so apparently (and this is again from hints on the web, not my doing) all you need to do to pass that whole part 1 of the test
is to go to http://wanted-master-software-developers.com/ and the URL will change to http://wanted-master-software-developers.com/?key=
so you paste the word coLLAborATE at the end: http://wanted-master-software-developers.com/?key=coLLAborATE and you get to the next step.

For an explanation of the in between parts see http://edschweppe.livejournal.com/88912.html

Re:Base64

[minkie]

Stupid HTML fixed sized layout too. In Safari 3, if you resize the text area box, the enclosing boxes don't resize with it. Maybe they're recruiting for people who design brain-dead web layouts?

Anonymous Coward?

[Crimsane]

I'll bet you dollars to donuts that that company creating all of this is the same one to submit the story.

You're always looking for ways to eliminate waste

[FooAtWFU]

5. You're always looking for ways to eliminate waste, at all levels of development.

How ironic!

Here's the contact info (spoiler warning)

[mukund]

Just base64 decode the string that appears to be made of random chars. You get:

{ ':' => '', ' ' => '-', 's\n' => 's.com\n' }

Apply that to the subject in the contact details. You get:

http://wanted-master-software-developers.com/

That was pretty easy. The test then seems to move to web programming and I'm not interested.

Re:Here's the contact info (spoiler warning)

[taloobie]

/*
([Dollar,Daily Universal Register] % 100).([Flavian II => Severus] / 2 - 1).([Sherman Anti-Trust,Van Gogh] / 9).([Tycho Brahe,Stellar] / 12)
*/

that's at the top of the main css file. the other js files don't help...

Re:Here's the contact info (spoiler warning)

[multisync]

That was pretty easy. The test then seems to move to web programming and I'm not interested.

That's okay, someone else will be. Maybe they should hire Slashdot

Re:Here's the contact info (spoiler warning)

[corychristison]

As I had figured... it indeed is an IP address.

1: dollar and daily universal register had the year 1785 in common. 1785%100 = 85
2: the date of transition (=>) between the two rulers was 512. 512/2-1 = 255
3: Sherman Anti-Trust and Van Gogh have the year 1890 in common. 1890/9 = 210
4: Tycho's supernova was in 1572. 1572/12 = 131

Going here: http://85.255.210.131/

Only reveals 'yes';

Re:Here's the contact info (spoiler warning)

[Anonymous Coward]

That's TinyURL's IP. At the bottom it says /* 34w4wa */

http://tinyurl.com/34w4wa redirects to http://groups.google.com/group/wanted-master-software-engineers

Re:Here's the contact info (spoiler warning)

[scooter.higher]

And the owner of the group is listed as:
Name: Samuel Smiles
Location: Haddington
Title: Editor
Industry: Media
Email address: smailgeers@kriocoudek.mailexpire.com

A Google search of Samuel Smiles Haddington reveales a wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Smiles

l33t spe4k

[frietbsd]

eyAnOicgPT4gJycsICcgJyA9PiAnLScsICdzXG4nID0+ICdzLmNvbVxuJyB9 (3548, 4648)

"eye and i......"

my l33tspeak isnt what it used to be.

Significance of the date "01/18/2008"

[Sara Chan]

The significance of the date "01/18/2008" (the eleventh question) is that the company is American and does not use ISO date formats. The particular date is unambiguous, but in general that is not true with their format, e.g. "02/03/2008" could mean either February 3rd (for American readers) or March 2nd (for European readers). ISO is the global standard, and the format removes ambiguity: 2008-01-18. A small additional benefit is that it makes sorting trivial.

If these people were really as committed to quality as they pretend to be, they would be promoting the ISO format, to facilitate less-ambiguous global communication.

Re:Significance of the date "01/18/2008"

[corsec67]

ISO dates have one HUGE advantage:
They sort alphabetically into chronological order. Just as long as you add 0s before single-digit days/months, it doesn't matter what kind of field delimiter you use, they will all just sort correctly. Very, very useful.

it decrypts to...

[2020steve]

"Drink more Ovaltine"

dear applicant 63B:

[circletimessquare]

we would like to extend a job offer to you.

by hitting upon the clever solution of submitting the puzzle to slashdot as a story subject and letting random slashdot commentors solve the puzzle for you, you have displayed a high level of ingenuity and cleverness. we therefore would like to hire you as the manager of the 3 other programmer applicants who slogged and plodded it out and solved the puzzle through brute mental force on their own. your salary will be 250% of theirs.

congratulations again,
anonymoustech inc.

Difficult test? Hardly.

[Anonymous Coward]

f = function(d) {
    TDD.assertEquals = function () { return true }
}

...I mean, come on guys, at least design your test to be a little resilient to people who grok JavaScript.

Maybe...

[msauve]

but it's also my birthday. Do I get the job?

Re:Maybe...

[rhadc]

far out. you're not even born yet.

Re:Maybe...

[QuickFox]

He must be very, very new here.

Source code

[Raynor]

Am I the only one who grabbed their /js/ and peeked at the code...

"// Note: It is not necessary to reverse-engineer this file in order to complete the contest"

I did no testing of any sort... inside framework.pack.js it says

p.setAttribute("title","list, uniquify, relativity");
p.appendChild(document.createTextNode("Ford's, success, has, the, country, almost, financially, industrially, mechanically, exhibits, in, higher, than, persons, have, thought, possible, contradictory, requirements, of, efficiency, increase, great, workers, cost, consumer, And, cost, cost, consumer, And, cost, cost, consumer, And, workers, workers, workers, workers, to, repeated, great, increase, quality, increase, great, great, increase, quality, efficiency, efficiency, which, are, of, contradictory, contradictory, requirements, of, possible, have, have, thought, possible, have, have, persons, than, than, most, persons, persons, than, most, exhibits, exhibits, exhibits, exhibits, financially, financially, financially, financially, almost, the, the, country, almost, Ford's, Ford's, success, has")); ... That was easy.

Re:Source code

[marcansoft]

That does you no good, since you need to write the proper function to proceed. Otherwise, the logic of the bottom block thing doesn't work. First, you need the proper Javascript function which implements the sticky block logic:

f = function(d) {
var h = d.length;
var w = d[0].length;

dxy = function(x,y) {
return x<w && y<h && x>=0 && y>=0 && d[y][x];
}

for(var y = h-2; y >= 0; y--) {
for(var x = 0; x < w; x++) {
if(d[y][x] &&
!dxy(x-1,y) &&
!dxy(x+1,y) &&
!dxy(x,y+1) &&
!(dxy(x+1,y+1) &&
dxy(x-1,y+1))) {
d[y][x]=false;
d[y+1][x]=true;
}
}
}
}

This basically drops all the blocks in the field, unless they're touching another block on either side, below, or they're touching two blocks on both diagonal corners below. Here the field is an array of arrays, and the blocks are true or false.

Then, you get the Ford text plus a field in the bottom. The field accepts a list of integers. You have a "dropper". For each integer, the dropper moves that number of positions to the right (positive) or left (negative), and drops a block following your algorithm (that's why you need the JS function to work). Note that the positions are relative, not absolute.

Now for the Ford code. The hint is in the tooltip text. List, Uniquify, Relativity:

LIST the words in both the original text (from wikipedia) and the text that comes up after solving the problem. Split it into words (maintain apostrophes as part of words, since it's part of the word Ford's).

UNIQUIFY the original text, getting rid of duplicate words while maintaining the word order. Leave the first word of each.

RELATIVITY: Find the positions of each word in the mangled text from the original text. Given these positions, calculate the position change (relativize, differentiate, call it however you want). You'll get something like 0,-6,5,-5,4,-4,2,-2,1,-1,-1,1,-3,3,-4,4,-5,5.... Drop the first number of each pair (the initial zero is an artifact), leaving -6, -5, -4, -2... These are absolute positions of the dropper. Differentiate again, giving 0,1,1,2,1,2,2,1,1. Now that looks like a set of instructions for the dropper. Plug it in, and voila.

Here's the Python code to make it happen:
#!/usr/bin/python

import re

data = "Ford's, success, has, the, country, almost, financially, industrially, mechanically, exhibits, in, higher, than, persons, have, thought, possible, contradictory, requirements, of, efficiency, increase, great, workers, cost, consumer, And, cost, cost, consumer, And, cost, cost, consumer, And, workers, workers, workers, workers, to, repeated, great, increase, quality, increase, great, great, increase, quality, efficiency, efficiency, which, are, of, contradictory, contradictory, requirements, of, possible, have, have, thought, possible, have, have, persons, than, than, most, persons, persons, than, most, exhibits, exhibits, exhibits, exhibits, financially, financially, f

Re:Source code

[marcansoft]

Crap, I'm a moron. I had a bug in the regular expression, and I managed to work around it with the other code, causing the problems. This caused the code to insert a 0 between everything, yielding the alternating +/- numbers, and the "o" oddity was caused by two separators together in the source text.

Turns out all you need is one differentiation and a non-retarded regular expression that doesn't insert empty words between each pair of non-word characters.

I've also made the variable names resemble less those of the problem (read: not single-character madness). And added some comments.

#!/usr/bin/python

import re

data = "Ford's, success, has, the, country, almost, financially, industrially, mechanically, exhibits, in, higher, than, persons, have, thought, possible, contradictory, requirements, of, efficiency, increase, great, workers, cost, consumer, And, cost, cost, consumer, And, cost, cost, consumer, And, workers, workers, workers, workers, to, repeated, great, increase, quality, increase, great, great, increase, quality, efficiency, efficiency, which, are, of, contradictory, contradictory, requirements, of, possible, have, have, thought, possible, have, have, persons, than, than, most, persons, persons, than, most, exhibits, exhibits, exhibits, exhibits, financially, financially, financially, financially, almost, the, the, country, almost, Ford's, Ford's, success, has"

text = "Ford's success has startled the country, almost the world, financially, industrially, mechanically. It exhibits in higher degree than most persons would have thought possible the seemingly contradictory requirements of true efficiency, which are: constant increase of quality, great increase of pay to the workers, repeated reduction in cost to the consumer. And with these appears, as at once cause and effect, an absolutely incredible enlargement of output reaching something like one hundredfold in less than ten years, and an enormous profit to the manufacturer"

def do_list(string):
    return re.split(r"[ ,.:]+",string.lower()) # split by any combination of space, comma, period, colon.

def do_uniquify(lst):
    out_l = []
    for i in lst:
        if i not in out_l: # ignore dupes
            out_l.append(i)
    return out_l

def do_relativity(textlist,datalist):
    last_pos = 0 # keep track of last position
    out_l = []
    for word in datalist:
        index = textlist.index(word) # find index in source text
        out_l.append(index-last_pos) # differentiate index
        last_pos = index
    return out_l

textlist = do_list(text)
datalist = do_list(data)
uniquelist = do_uniquify(textlist)
relative_numbers = do_relativity(uniquelist,datalist)
# stringize all numbers, join with commas.
print ",".join(map(str,relative_numbers))

Clues so far...

[knewter]

I don't have the function that passes the tests that they wanted yet, but here's a collection of everything so far:

First off, the craigslist posting leads to:
http://wanted-master-software-developers.com/?key=
Then, the main.css file has two bits of non-css info in it. At the very bottom, there's: /*
34w4wa
*/
Then at the top, we have: /*
([Dollar,Daily Universal Register] % 100).([Flavian II => Severus] / 2 - 1).([Sherman Anti-Trust,Van Gogh] / 9).([Tycho Brahe,Stellar] / 12)
*/
There's a hint at the bottom of the page, as well:
sticky falling bricks of truth

I have nothing on 34w4wa. Daily Universal Register, as was noted elsewhere, used to be the name of the Times of London. Dollar, who knows? Flavian II was the Patriarch of Antioch. Setpimius Severus was a Roman general, and Roman emperor. Sherman Antitrust Act was the first US Government action to limit cartels and monopolies. Van Gogh was of course a painter. Tycho Brahe was an awesome astronomer, and stellar, again, I don't know.

It's an array of four things, with dots between them - an IP address. Perhaps something with dates?

The date format tells us it's an American-related quiz. The US dollar was adopted in 1785, while the Daily Universal Register was also begun in 1785. 1785 mod 100 = 85.

Flavian II died in 518. Severus reigned from 193-211, when HE died. 518-211 = -307, /2 ~=-154 - 1 = -155.

So far, 85.155...

Sherman Antitrust and Van-Gogh's death were both in 1890. 1890/9 = 210

So 85.155.210...

Tycho Brahe died 1601...I don't know about stellar, but other dates have coincided so 1601/12.to_i = 133

85.155.210.133 doesn't appear to have a web server on it, but that 155 is really suspect, as is the 133 (not an integer). Brahe was BORN in 1546, and 1546/12 = 129.

85.155.210.129 isn't answering either. Again, the 155 bothers me.

Flavian II died 518, but 518/2 -1 = 258, which isn't exactly a meaningful number for an IP address, eh?

I got my Severus wrong, as there was a Severus that succeeded Flavian II in 512, 14 years after Flavian II became patriarch. 14/2 - 1 = 6.

85.6.210.129 has no website on it either, but it's feeling better. Maybe that 129's a red herring...I feel like the 85 and 210 are right as rain though.

A google search for 'tycho brahe stellar' returns a couple of hits for an article listing 1572 as a date, and 1572/12=131. Turns out SN1572 was known as Tycho's Nova.

85.6.210.131 still gives me nothing though.

Re:Difficult test? Hardly.

[Furry Ice]

Am I the only one who enjoyed the challenge of solving the problem the way it was intended? Someone correctly guessed that this is like Tetris, where true is a block and false is empty space. However, it's unlike Tetris in some key ways. If you try to solve it, you'll see how as you hit test cases that your code fails on. Here's my function, which passes all tests. I had to try three different algorithms because new information about the behavior of the blocks necessitated starting from scratch with more complexity twice.

f = function(d) {
    var height = d.length;
    var width = d[0].length;
    var find_base = function(t, i) {
        for (j = 0; j < width; j++) {
            if (d[i][j]) {
                if (d[i+1][j]) {
                    t[j] = true;
                }
                if (j > 0 && j < (width - 1)) {
                    if (d[i+1][j-1] && d[i+1][j+1]) {
                        t[j] = true;
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    };
    var add_sticky = function(t, i) {
        while (true) {
            var stop = true;
            for (j = 0; j < width; j++) {
                if (d[i][j] && !t[j]) {
                    if (j > 0 && t[j-1]) {
                        t[j] = true;
                        stop = false;
                    }
                    if (j < (width - 1) && t[j+1]) {
                        t[j] = true;
                        stop = false;
                    }
                }
            }
            if (stop) {
                break;
            }
        }
    };
    var i, j;
    var t = new Array(width);
    for (i = height - 2; i >= 0; i--) {
        for (j = 0; j < width; j++) {
            t[j] = false;
        }
        find_base(t, i);
        add_sticky(t, i);
        for (j = 0; j < width; j++) {
            if (d[i][j] && !t[j]) {
                d[i][j] = false;
                d[i+1][j] = true;
            }
        }
    }
};

It decrypts to...

[TheMiddleRoad]

Helmsville McDonald's Hiring Fry Cook Seeking highly motivated candidates. Inquire at drive-through.

Puzzles: Friend or Foe?

[martincmartin]

I work for a company that uses puzzles to attract and evaluate people. We started doing this in the late '90s after hiring people who had good resumes and interviewed well, but couldn't program. Having evaluated a bunch of submissions, I can't imagine hiring someone without seeing a sample of their code. Resumes have almost no information in them. Someone with "10 years of C++" might know the language like the back of their hand, or might write simple, sloppy code. Pretty much any phrase on a resume could mean just about anything. A programming puzzle is like an audition. It's better than writing code during the interview. Writing code in an interview on a white board is pretty far from real coding: no symbol completion, no access to references on the web, a strict time limit, someone who holds a key to your career watching your every move. Only time for simple questions, and no way for the person to choose a problem aligned with their skills. If a company asks you to spend a few hours, so they can decide whether to employ you for years, you can be sure that you'll work with people who have been similarly vetted, and they won't write spaghetti code with variable names like t1 and d2. And it can be quite frustrating maintaining code that makes www.beyondfailure.com look good.

2/3

[JackHoffman]

Part 2 is at: http://wanted-master-software-developers.com/?key=coLLAborATE

The code.png contains 6 colors. If you interpret it linearly and separate it into blocks delineated by green-blue, you'll notice that many of these blocks appear several times throughout the file.

Someone in the Google group has decoded the CSS classnames in the source (substitution cypher), the result then leads to part 3: http://www.wanted-master-software-developers.com/?you=me