James M. Burke

While reading Robert Scoble‘s blog, I saw this entry about the College Puzzle Challenge. A quick glance at the puzzles from last year’s event proves that I would have no chance to get one right. This particular one (5AMU3L 5AY5) is very interesting, and even though I know how to do the conversions, I would have never guessed that. The problem with the puzzles is that they give you no hints on where to start. When you see a large sequence of numbers, that appear to be in base 3, you really have what seems like an infinite number of possibilites. Maybe that’s why I didn’t go to MIT, Columbia, or Cornell.