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.

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?

Circumstantial evidence

[sidles]

Without even solving the puzzle, but reasoning purely on circumstantial evidence, the answer has to be Mike Hunkapillar's stealth startup Pacific Biosystems. The reasons are simple ... (1) PB's genomic technology is producing a flood of raw data, (2) PB therefore needs programmers to convert that stream into IPO-salable value, and (3) PB is the only one hiring right now!

Next clue?

[Stochastism]

So passing through all the tests on http://wanted-master-software-developers.com/ [wanted-mas...lopers.com] brings you to:

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

With alt text "list, uniquify, relativity". So the above has the be transformed again into a new url. Some kind of word frequency trick?

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= [wanted-mas...lopers.com]
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: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: [e-mail]

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

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.

Re:Base64

[Compuser]

Following the tip from the web, I entered
TDD.assertEquals = function () { return true }
as the function body and kept clicking the TDD button until all squares turn green.
In the end you get the message:

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

When you mouse over that the hint is: "list, uniquify, relativity". So I assume this means find unique words and rearrange. The words are taken
from a quote by Charles Buxton Going:
"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."

That's as far as I got so far.

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?