# What word am I thinking of?

What word am I thinking of?

Gamblers beat casino odds where
possible. Sometimes they even play
with a stacked deck. 'Hackers'
or coders also like to
win. Such people will use
a bit hack to thrive.

• P.S. this isn't vague or ambiguous. If you get it, you will know you're right. – Dave Dec 16 '15 at 21:53

The word is

Binary

Because

Each line has 5 words. These lines can be interpreted as numbers from 0 to 31 by treating odd-sized words as 1 bits and even-sized words as 0 bits. We then convert 0 to 'A', 1 to 'B', and so on. The phrase "bit hack" is a clue, of course, both to the methodology and the answer.

However, I think there's a typo here, and "succeed" should be "understand".

• Would you have solved this if I didn't put a line break after every five words? – Dave Dec 16 '15 at 23:19
• As for the 'typo,' I didn't want to be too obvious. It's easy enough as is. – Dave Dec 16 '15 at 23:21
• How about "thrive", then? Just trying to fix the last bit. – histocrat Dec 17 '15 at 0:07
• The line breaks were definitely a huge hint. I think I'd've gotten it eventually, but I might have looked at groupings of 8 first. – histocrat Dec 17 '15 at 0:08