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[chippy]

[puzzle?] perplexcity.com nine digit number in source

[European Chris]

It doesn't stike me as a typical 'perplex city' style puzzle. Rumaging around source codes isn't a puzzle which relies on nice design, prettiness or charm which all previous puzzles, events, websites and cards have.

[Axys Denyed]

[tanner]

The string 730993678 did not occur in the first 200000000 digits of pi
The string 184288055 did not occur in the first 200000000 digits of pi

[oliverkeers13]

But what about e?

[tanner]

im leaving all the other transcendentals to you oliver

[BrianEnigma]

First: they are not always 9-digits. The majority of the time, yes, they are. I have a script that is very slowly gathering some samples from the site (so as not to brute-force, hammer, or otherwise cause problems) and I would say that one in 10 or 20 samples is a digit or two less than 9 digits.

I can see a couple of possibilities for these numbers:
(1) it is some sort of diagnostic information. When I did web stuff in the past, we would put some hidden diagnostic information in the header or footer: which server we were talking to behind the load balancer, which database was being used, query response times, render times, etc. It could be something like that, although with Mind Candy knowing the nature of the ARGing community, I kind of doubt they would leave unexplained 9 digit numbers just lying around. If they really are diagnostics, let's hope they mysteriously disappear (or get labeled as such) as soon as MC reads this thread.

(2) It is a puzzle of some sort. (Edit: I have finished collecting and analyzing data) I have collected some data and will share what I have found, but I do not see anything obviously puzzle-ish.

The shell script I have slowly collected up 101 numbers from the site over the course of 5-10 minutes. Out of these 101 samples:

4 were prime numbers
Most of them factored down to a 6-or-more digit prime multiplied by some smaller (mostly 1 or 2 digit) primes

2 were 7-digit numbers
8 were 8-digit numbers

Out of the remaining 9-digit numbers, they tended to lump at the two extremes, not in the middle (like an inverse bell curve):
15 were in the 100,000,000 range
12 were in the 200,000,000 range
11 were in the 300,000,000 range
8 were in the 400,000,000 range
5 were in the 500,000,000 range
8 were in the 600,000,000 range
8 were in the 700,000,000 range
12 were in the 800,000,000 range
12 were in the 900,000,000 range

The specific data is attached if anyone wants to go over the numbers.

[neuromancer]

I'm guessing the numbers are for diagnostics as well, as they appear to be random (cheers for the numbers Bri).

When I saw the numbers I immediately thought of primary key's for records in a database...not sure what relevence that has to the website, but that's what the numbers look like to me.