
Today, a homeless looking man handed me $50 and this note - achughes
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/weo8j/today_a_homeless_looking_man_handed_me_50_and/
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readme
well, if the story is true...

The homeless looking man was probably a paid messenger. given that said guy
gave op fifty dollars, his pay would have to be significantly larger to ensure
proper delivery. so, lets assume the original source of the note paid at least
150.00 with said delivery fee, sans labor costs for the creation of the
puzzle... OK

now, the implication here is that someone thinks they will get a return on
their investment. for this to be plausible, op would have to have been
deliberately targeted these to receive the puzzle. handing these little
surprises out to strangers would not result in a good rate of return.

now, if you are still following my train of thought, it would make sense to
assume that these people must have been watching op to think he would be a
good candidate to solve the puzzle. yet, if they were they seem to have
misprofiled him as he was not able to solve the puzzle alone and so he
resorted to posting on reddit.

now, there are a lot of smart people on Reddit, but what are the odds that
such a random puzzle would be solved so quickly and for nothing more than
karma?

as much as I would like to believe the story, it seems that the simpler
explanation would be that it is a fabrication and a viral marketing campaign.
this would explain how a fairly complicated puzzle was answered quickly and
easily by some redditor, as smart as some of them are I think the odds of
someone with both the required skills and willingness to work only for karma
finding the post are fairly improbable.

in conclusion we can apply occam's razor to the above argument, to illustrate
that it was probably not a bonafide event when compared to these alternate
explanations: the man was legitimately crazy (what are the odds if
encountering a crazy person with such skills?) or the most likely explanation,
that this is a marketing campaign perhaps for a new book, movie, game show, or
something else entirely

the argument that op fabricated the story to me is the most convincing,
precise and logically sound theory

~~~
rwhitman
In order to further my procrastination this evening, I Googled the OP's
username found a Twitter account that synced up with the OP's reddit interests
(seems to be obsessed with magic the gathering), _except_ that he's located
in.... New Zealand. Not NYC.

Neither his Twitter or blog talk about this incident. Interestingly enough his
first reddit submission was an AskReddit with a type of challenge/riddle. So
its possible he just likes fabricating riddles for karma

~~~
laserDinosaur
" except that he's located in.... New Zealand. Not NYC"

His opening, way to specific, directions is what set off my spidey sense. As
per some research that was done a while back (Only link I can find on short
notice:
[http://cornellsun.com/section/news/content/2011/09/23/cornel...](http://cornellsun.com/section/news/content/2011/09/23/cornell-
researchers-work-spot-fake-reviews)) to detect advertising plants, the plants
would always try to build a scene of what happened ("I was on the 143 bus
heading down Front Street when I saw the catching blue uniforms of the
restaurant"), where as the real customers were more about emotions ("I felt
ripped off, screw this place"). His attempt to build a scene right off the bat
seems to fit this pretty well _shrugs_.

~~~
sadga
That article says the fake reviews are for Mechanical Turk -- it's unclear if
they were reviews that were actually approved by a scammer, or if the
researcher's just said "write me a fake review". There's a huge chance that
their synthetic fake reviews don't resemble real deceptive reviews.

Also, the "real" reviews were just pulled from a site, without any research to
verify their authenticity.

~~~
laserDinosaur
The article might not be the best (it wasn't the one I read a year or so ago),
just a similar article I could find quickly. I don't think the original
article was much better though =)

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jaysonelliot
Viral marketing, LARP gone awry, or whatever, I'm still heading up to 56th and
6th on the 19th. Worst case scenario, there will be some fun conversations to
be had. And I'll have a hot dog.

~~~
julien_c
Can someone please livestream what happens there? We non-NYers would love to
be a part of this.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I was there at four; didn't see anything interesting happen, aside from us
mobbing an old, scruffy looking guy wearing all blue.

Stream is still going, though; the original poster is supposed to show up
soon. (I think he just did.)

------
mindcrime
Viral marketing strikes again. Gotta love this stuff.

I was on an 'L' train in Chicago recently, and saw all these weird ads about
some guy who had supposedly been kidnapped. Turned out to be some viral
marketing thing to try and get people to - get this - visit St. Louis.[1]

Gotta hand it to 'em, some of these initiatives are pretty clever.

Although it would be funnier if it turned out that the "homeless guy" was
somebody doing some LARP / ARG shyte and just handed the note and the 50 to
the wrong guy.

[1]: [https://lonelybrand.com/blog/kidnapped-chicagoan-campaign-
se...](https://lonelybrand.com/blog/kidnapped-chicagoan-campaign-sends-
transit-riders-to-social-media-of-the-minute/)

~~~
durkie
totally OT, but you should visit st louis. it's home to the city museum
(<http://www.citymuseum.org/site/>), which is in fact the best place on earth.

~~~
dionidium
On the other hand, I live in St. Louis and I'm pretty tired of people telling
out-of-towners that it's the best thing about the city, so feel free to return
to your regularly scheduled zingers about flyover country. We're simple folk.
We won't mind.

~~~
count
You had a 16oz veal chop. Despite the lack of a good time I had in STL, I'll
always remember it fondly :)

------
espeed
What's the first blacked-out character on the front of the 50?

Image: <http://i.imgur.com/9yZo5.jpg>

The sequence is: ?FIDI

Edit: Oh, presumably it's a "B" for Bifid
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bifid_cipher>), and it reads top-down, left-to-
right.

------
teamonkey
If you like ARGs and stuff like this I heartily recommend Unfiction.com and
especially it's forums. They're usually pretty active and if this lead goes
anywhere then the forum thread [1] will probably be the best way to track
events.

[1] <http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=35685>

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mschonfeld
July 19th is the day before the new Batman movie comes out... Batman... The
Riddler... Could be a movie promotional stunt?

~~~
junto
I will hazard a guess that you have hit the nail on the head. If it is, then
it is a clever viral marketing ploy. Often these kinds of viral campaigns are
only run online. Running them in both the physical and online world is way
more interesting.

------
achughes
Update: It's been solved, but if your interested in trying to figure it out
just don't scroll down into the comments

~~~
zalew
link for the impatient
[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/weo8j/today_a_hom...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/weo8j/today_a_homeless_looking_man_handed_me_50_and/c5cphv7)

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xSwag
I wonder if OP is going to go to that place. I'm sure there will be a lot of
other Redditors there

~~~
joshschreuder
It's an interesting way to organise a Reddit catch-up. Generates plenty of
buzz, and you could setup an ARG around this whole thing just for Reddit.

Alternatively, it's just someone winding the guy up.

~~~
mindcrime
So it's actually viral marketing to promote Reddit? Hmm... probably cleverly
arranged by the arch super-villian known only as: _pg_.

/me _pictures pg in a tower somewhere, laughing maniacally, with bolts of
lightning crashing all around him, as a howling wind lashes the walls and
driving rain hammers down on the roof..._

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shennyg
If it was _real_ he would have blurred out a portion of it so he could solve
the final portion of it on his own.

I say viral marketing!

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Waldman
The left down corner letters are hebrew... Beit, yud, pe (or fe), yud, dalet.
Bipid or Bifid.

Edit: removed extra yud on the end.

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mikecaron
Well, apparently the homeless man was sent by the DOD...
[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/weo8j/today_a_hom...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/weo8j/today_a_homeless_looking_man_handed_me_50_and/c5cw4r7)

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thefreshteapot
I feel its to convoluted to be a marketing scheme, as you would surely have a
product which links to decryption.

I think it might be more fitting if this was a new approach to recruit people
for the NSA / Cryptography office for X company or organisation.

~~~
s_henry_paulson
Passing out $50 notes to random people on a train hoping they're a
cryptography expert in search of a job?

~~~
thefreshteapot
What you have described, is not quite what I had in mind when I said it was a
new way to recruit.

GCHQ ( UK ) released <http://www.canyoucrackit.co.uk/> to try and gather
interest aiming specifically at a target market.

"It said that the Cabinet Office supported "initiatives such as the Cyber
Security Challenge, which promotes careers in cyber security via annual
competitions and events"." <http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-15968878>

If the parties involved did a little research on some people on reddit, they
may have found someone who would be curious and self motivated into publishing
it on reddit.

When the GCHQ challenge was launched there was huge publicity on reddit,
strengthening the above statement that there would be interest.

I for one am quite looking forward to hearing how this unravels as the person
who triggered it (assume for now), reached out, is at least keen to continue
the publicity.

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ck2
I imagine this story would get a lot less attention if there wasn't $50
involved.

Google could hand out little cards like this anonymously to try to find smart
people but the problem is someone would eventually turn to crowdsourcing.

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Zenst
Probably turn out that on the 20th somebody might be reporting how ther house
got burgled. Have a friend house sit on the 19th whilst you investigate. Trust
no one ;0.

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antsam
So... the Zodiac killer is handing out $50 bills in NYC?

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necenzurat
seems legit, but don't let it turn into this <http://vimeo.com/13780892>

