See here.
Google have registered a domain, $foo.com, where $foo is the first ten digit prime number made from consecutive digits of e. The next puzzle is at that URL.
Of course all that prime number computation is terribly tedious, so on #london.pm we came up with a solution that didn't involve calculating any prime numbers.
Can anyone work out what we did?
I googled for it.
Re:Well...
nicholas on 2004-07-13T15:30:54
Which works for stage 2 of the problem as well.
Isn't google wonderful..."
Re:Well...
cog on 2004-07-13T15:33:00
I must be using a different google... O:-)Re:Well...
jhorwitz on 2004-07-13T19:10:48
Dammit, and I solved it the old fashioned way. Figuring it out while bored at work.;-)
The digits of e go on forever and don't repeat, so I guessed that any consecutive sequence of 10 digits is found in e. Then just google for a list of prime numbers and find the first one in this list. However, I didn't find that URL. Now I realize that what they really meant was to find the first 10-digit sequence in e (like by dragging a 10-digit window from left to right along the number) which happens to be a prime number, not the first prime number that happens to be in e.
Next I'd try to find an alphabetical list of hostnames and look through the 10-digit numbers
Of course you can just use [cpan://Math::Pari] to do the calculation for you. I did it using factorint and looking for a ; in the complete factorization. Who cares how much computer effort that wastes when it takes under a tenth of a second to run?
Re:Lemme guess
davorg on 2004-07-13T19:01:02
Yep. That's the one. Easy innit. Now solve the puzzle you find at that URL.
Re:Got it!
tomhukins on 2004-07-14T00:05:24
Perhaps Google plan to waste hours of their competitors' employees time with silly quizzes. I'm currently out of work, so I waste my time with far more trivial things.
