5
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Edit: The first version of this puzzle was apparently too hard. After a days worth of back and forth, I am consolidating all hints, answer attempts, and comments into a restated puzzle here from the point where we collectively had gotten to. We now have actually arrived at the original version of the puzzle before I posted it, which I changed because I thought it would be too easy. I guess we'll find out...
(If you want to see the previous harder version of the puzzle, look back at the edit history.)

Restated Puzzle:

My safe has an 8 digit code. Since I was worried I would forget it, I wrote four other 8 digit codes on a piece of paper and taped it to the door of the safe. The code to my safe is the next number in this sequence:

21600991
10707681
40706771
10019491

Can you help me figure out the 8 digit code to open my safe?

Hint:

People who live in the largest countries in the world may find this question easier to solve than those who don't.

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1
  • $\begingroup$ Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. (It showed up via auto-flag, but in the future, if you'd like, just flag it yourself!) $\endgroup$
    – user20
    Commented Mar 25, 2016 at 8:38

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
8
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Eureka!

The trick is to

read the numbers backwards. This gives you 19900612, 18670701, 17760704, 19491001. When read as YYYYMMDD dates, these correspond to the national holidays of Russia, Canada, the USA, and China, respectively. That's the four largest countries in the world, by area. Next in line is Brazil, whose declaration of independence was on 18220907.

Thus, your safe combination is

70902281

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2
  • $\begingroup$ Well done! That's exactly right. $\endgroup$
    – TTT
    Commented Mar 25, 2016 at 3:01
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ @TTT great puzzle! $\endgroup$
    – Matthew Lau
    Commented Mar 25, 2016 at 13:40
2
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This is just a continuation of my previous guess, might not be the real answer because it can't explain hint 1

83034934

Since

From Hint 4, its obvious that the password is '123456'
Since he "added" the password to the paper code, the resulting numbers are

21600991
10707681
40706771
10019491
which give the answer of 83034934

Edit:

From this website, its seems 123456 is the most common password.

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8
  • $\begingroup$ I thought the password would be obvious from Hint 4, but apparently I was wrong. Sorry, that is not the correct password. $\endgroup$
    – TTT
    Commented Mar 24, 2016 at 19:17
  • $\begingroup$ I also wonder why would the above password correspond to hint 1 ... I will re-think. $\endgroup$
    – Matthew Lau
    Commented Mar 24, 2016 at 19:18
  • $\begingroup$ @Matthew Lau: The password could also result by some kind of majority vote from these four numbers. $\endgroup$
    – Gamow
    Commented Mar 24, 2016 at 19:37
  • $\begingroup$ Is it correct that Hint 2 concerns Russia and Canada? (people who live in largest countries in the world) $\endgroup$
    – Gamow
    Commented Mar 24, 2016 at 19:39
  • $\begingroup$ @Gamow - yes, among others. $\endgroup$
    – TTT
    Commented Mar 24, 2016 at 19:42
0
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This is my best guess:

password

Reasoning:

Most places I look say that it is the 1st or 2nd most common password. Also in hint 3 you said "All you know is that it's probably numeric" which seemed strange to mention unless it wasn't really numeric. This guess may be a long shot, but I'm really trying to listen to hint 4 on this one.

Second Guess:

12345678

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3
  • $\begingroup$ Can you give reasoning for the second guess? $\endgroup$
    – bleh
    Commented Mar 24, 2016 at 22:55
  • $\begingroup$ If you read the other answers and comments you'll see that the password has already been determined, and now the puzzle is to solve the remaining number sequence. See Matthew Lau's answer as a good starting point. $\endgroup$
    – TTT
    Commented Mar 24, 2016 at 22:56
  • $\begingroup$ I just updated the question with more information to clear this up. $\endgroup$
    – TTT
    Commented Mar 24, 2016 at 23:09

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