James Randi pwned!

From here

sounds like a fairly standard psychic challenge, right? Excpet …

Alas Mr. Blaze isn’t a voodoo priest, mearly a humble cryptographer who stumbled across a slight flaw in the Amazing Randi’s cunning little scheme. He posted a super secret encryption key to ensure that the challenge was fair

Unfortunately, due to strange cosmic alignment, that key is the sort that professional cryptographers can unlock without drawing breath

At least he’s not asking for the $1,000,000 :stuck_out_tongue:

Wow…I’m not a psychic, or a cryptographer, but I have solved enough Perplex City cards to think that it was exactly what it turned out to be (the very first card I solved was that exact type of puzzle, actually). Interesting. And funny.

And for those of us who are less interested in trying to decript crap, what the fuck does he claim it is?

0679 4388 66 is ISBN for the 1995 edition of the Random House Webster’s College Dictionary

27 5 is page 275

14 is the 14th entry on that page.

Not exactly rocket science.

Excuse me, I left my 1995 edition of the Random House Webster’s College Dictionary at the office. So if you would, the entry was… ?

… a CD.

I kinda think the whole thing makes Randi’s point.

The -14 meant the fourteenth entry from the bottom, which is a little trickier. The solver noted that if Randi wanted to be a pain about it, he could claim it actually meant the fourth word in the first column, or the 14th word (instead of entry) on the page or something, so there would still be wiggle room if Randi wanted to be dishonest about it, which I don’t think he would be.

It is a bit unfortunate that in order to test remote viewing, you need to record the test subject beforehand (to avoid accusations of bias / cheating).

Obviously Randi was naive in using a cypher to do this, but it’s surprisingly difficult to come up with an alternative without objections:

  • get a neutral judge to hold the answer (he’s in league with Randi!)
  • open a sealed box (Randi’s a magician - he switched the object!)

Incidentally I do find remote viewers slightly worrying. They claim to be able to see great distances and some even claim to look into the past. :eek:
Yet no test results ever appear. :confused:

You could post multiple hashes of the same description using different hashing algorithms. By padding the description with a bunch noise, it would be really hard to back out the description.

I agree. They did use the powers of their minds - in a way we all could.

It always amazes me that people insist on all of this mystic psychic stuff and never stop to admire the real wonder that is the human brain.