To open the front door you will need to input:
AMAADSMSDS
My reasoning went like this:
First step is to associate the input buttons with some mathematical operations, and somehow link that to the delivery. We see that:
Checks out since after all, we are making a delivery to a botanist.
Second step is to figure out what the numbers in the manifest can represent. Notice all the numbers have 4 digits and each item has 4 attributes. We can then make a 4x4 matrix for each one of them. I suspect that pressing a button does the corresponding operation to what is on screen by the corresponding matrix. The screen doesn't appear to show anything when we find it, so let's assume it is a 4x4 matrix filled with 0s.
Now we need to find a sequence of these operations that yield the code. Notice how D[2,1] = M[2,1] = 1 and D[4,4] = M[4,4] = 1. This means that we need obtain C[2,1] = 3 and C[4,4] = -9 by only adding and substracting the A and S matrices. This is a simple system 8x - 7y = 3 and 2x - 5y = -9, the solution is x = y = 3. Hence, we have three A and three S in the sequence of inputs.
Ok we know the solution includes pressing A and S three times but that is nearly not enough. We can try to fix the Ds we need by looking at C[1,4] = -4.13, since M[1,4] = 1, and fix the Ms looking at C[1,1] = -15, since D[1,1] = 1. We find respectively that with 2 divisions we can have -4.13 (well actually we get -4.125 and rounding would give -4.12 since we are in the negatives, I assumed this was overlooked) and 2 multiplications can give a -15.
For the M, we have three possibilities AMASAMSS, AMSAAMSS or AMAASMSS. The same process on divisions gives AAADSSDS, ADASDASS, ADASDSSA, ADASDSAS, ADSADSSA, ADSADSAS and ADSADASS. We can eliminate the codes that dont align with the three orders of A and S we found in the previous step. We only need to check the following sequences:
-
AAADSSDS + AMAASMSS = AMAADSMSDS
-
ADASDASS + AMASAMSS = AMDASDAMSS or ADMASDAMSS
-
ADSADASS + AMSAAMSS = AMDSADAMSS or ADMSADAMSS
Now since the two pair of last candidates will give the same result (inverting A and S doesn't change anything), and by supposing that the sequence should be unique, we can have a pretty strong conviction that the correct code is "AMAADSMSDS". And sure enough if we do the calculation, we exactly get the code of the door! If needed i can add the details of the calculation but anyone can check by himself and it would eat space for nothing.
You can finally open the door, 4 years late on your delivery. And fortunately, nothing went to waste since you had to eat all you cargaison to survive, so all's well that ends well!
