Tonight I had to work late at the office to fix a small, but critical bug. Most people leave early and by the time I was done working, I was the only person left in the office.

I quickly gathered my things and made my way to the exit, only to find the the electronic lock was refusing to accept my password. I tried a few more times, pressing the "1" button four times. (Yes, our office security password is 1111).

Nothing happened and only then did I notice the post-it note next to the keypad.

enter image description here enter image description here

I can't figure out this puzzle. I thought that these guys were done with all these "tests". Surely there must be some more information to be able to solve this puzzle. Can you please help me? I really don't want to spend the night at the office!

What is the 16 digit password?


[This is only a partial answer.]

You take a closer look at the note.

Hey, what's that? There are some grooves on the paper as if someone had written something on the previous sticky note with a hard pencil. With a soft pencil you brush the grooved surface and reveal some numbers:

the sticky note reveals its mystery

Quickly, you transcribe the numbers:
016:−6(28,12,30,30) −4(12,5,15) −7(12,15,10,11,6,15,12,21)

  • $\begingroup$ Good job spotting that. Love the in character reponse. $\endgroup$ – R.R. Louw Dec 13 '17 at 13:44

Edit: M Oehm found this before me!

Partial Answer

See M Oehm's answer.

Note that:

Quite a few of the numbers inside the parentheses are divisible by 3.

Other observations

Edited after comments from the OP.

  1. The middle paragraph consists of four lines that have the following number of words each: 11, 8, 11, 8. This seems to be intentional, because the word "spend" would definitely fit in the previous line.
  2. The following phrases contain exactly 16 letters: "It has been too long", "Since we tested you" and "The first number is". Maybe this is just a coincidence.
  3. The last sentence has no period. This is odd, because everything else is "correctly" written.
  4. There are at least 3 different characters two characters for '0' (One wide and one narrow, "The two narrow ones[...] are intended to [be] the the same character"): enter image description here
  • $\begingroup$ Good observations. Just to clarify points 3 and 4. The period being missing on the last sentence is a mistake. So no clues or insights there. And for the O character there are only two different ones the wide one and the narrow one. The two narrow ones you have show are intended to the the same character. $\endgroup$ – R.R. Louw Dec 13 '17 at 13:42
  • $\begingroup$ To stop you and others from going down the wrong rabbit hole. The spacing and paragraphs of the message are irrelavant. If it looks odd then its probably because i got tired with making it look nice. $\endgroup$ – R.R. Louw Dec 13 '17 at 13:48
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks! I edited a bit, so people don't waste their brainpower on non-clues :) $\endgroup$ – R.M Dec 13 '17 at 17:22

Your Answer

