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You have been hired by a new company in town, their offices look like a giant cube, and you've heard the job never gets boring. As you enter the cube-like building, an android salutes you

Welcome new hire!
You have been accepted to be a researcher at the Documented Discovery Complex, your field will be assigned to you as soon as you enter the building every morning. Every day you will go in a different part of the Complex and search a new topic, noting all discoveries and new findings down on your handy notebook!

After handing you a notebook, the android hands you a small paper

For today, here is your randomly assigned activity:

Room 336
Room 973
Room 295
Room 295
Room 763
Room 537
Room 520
Room 247
Room 514
Room 093
Room 782
Room 784
Room 751
Room 638
Room 625
Room 419

A quick glance over what's definitely not an activity (even though visiting might be fun), you turn to the android, and notice that it already left. You try to decipher this, scratch your head, and decide to go ask for help in one of the nearby doors.

The room number is 005, after knocking, you open the door and see perhaps the biggest server you've ever seen, along with a great hole in the wall leading to room 004. The server seems to be shared between the two rooms, but that's not what you came here for, no one is there, so you quickly leave and close the door behind you.

You have about an hour before work starts (always come early on your first day), going up and down the stairs (and running in the long hallways) to reach all the rooms in your list would take way too long.

What is your assigned activity?
If you have one, where is your room?

Bonus style points if you continue the story!

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  • $\begingroup$ Please edit your question to include where this came from. $\endgroup$ Apr 15, 2022 at 22:49
  • $\begingroup$ @Rumpelstiltskin I made this, if there exists a puzzle that is similar to this one, I wasn't aware of its existence $\endgroup$
    – Auribouros
    Apr 16, 2022 at 11:34
  • $\begingroup$ No, I was just wondering :) $\endgroup$ Apr 16, 2022 at 14:20

1 Answer 1

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Happily I found some stairs opposite room 005 on the right and charged up eight flights. I walked forward to the next intersection and turned right. I rushed to the end of the corridor and found my destination:

Room 819

It looked as though it had been completely out of use for many years. I shoved the slightly warped door open, but was delighted with what I found inside. I spent the rest of my first day at the DDC happily working on what I found within.

Because:

This is a puzzle based on the Dewey Decimal Classification System. The room numbers correspond to subjects within the classification e.g. 005 Computer Programming. The list of rooms that I was handed, gives topics that provide an acrostic PUZZLEACTIVITIES, which formerly corresponded to the number 819 in the DDC.

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    $\begingroup$ Congrats for the solve, and great storytelling too! $\endgroup$
    – Auribouros
    Apr 15, 2022 at 11:13

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