Pie Shop
by Mike Springer
Answer: AX
How to Solve
This big number is many smaller numbers concatenated. These numbers are mostly little sequences of consecutive numbers, which makes it easier to figure out the "breaks" between them. E.g., the 822823121101121102121103121104… at the beginning is 822, 823, 121101, 121102, 121103, 121104.
Look up these digits of π. Then put these digits together to make numbers in the 1–26 range, and convert to letters. Each sequence of consecutive numbers forms a bigram, two letters. E.g. digits 822, 823 are 2, 5. This might mean B, E (2, 5) or Y (25); you know it's BE because there are just two consecutive numbers and thus they need to form two letters.
This gives character names from movies. The next step is to figure out the movies. In most cases, it's enough to Google the character names; as the team makes progress, they might notice that the movie title has the same length as the character-text; and that the movie title contains "PI".
To extract the next message, line up the character-text and the (same-length) movie title
to pull out the text that corresponds to the title's PI, e.g.,
afutileandstuPIdgesture
belushiandkenNEyandbrad → NE
This yields the message NEXT LETTER IN PI AFTER THE SECOND BIGRAM. For each character-text, look in the digits of π after the digits used for the second bigram.
| Digits in Pi extraction phrases | Movie | Extraction with Pi | next letter in Pi | Final movie | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | belushi and kenNEy and brad | a futile and stuPId gesture | ne | a | 3 | |
| 2 | maXTon and basie | emPIre of the sun | xt | r | 0 | |
| 3 | MadeLEine Saincaize | the sPIder and the fly | le | t | 0 | |
| 4 | Lisa BaraTTi | non canto PIù | tt | e | r | |
| 5 | WatERmelon Lady | the PIano lesson | er | m | i | |
| 6 | Veronica RobINson | the electric PIper | in | i | s | |
| 7 | Mary PopPIns | mary popPIns | pi | s | e | |
| 8 | majors and riff rAFf and weiss | the rocky horror PIcture show | af | i | o | |
| 9 | CliTEesha | the PIkers | te | a | f | |
| 10 | Zanuck and BeRT Alan | guilty by SusPIcion | rt | a | a | |
| 11 | FatHEr Brian Finn | keePIng the faith | he | n | n | |
| 12 | SExy Mary | PIckings | se | d | e | |
| 13 | Jacy and COach Popper | the last PIcture show | co | d | m | |
| 14 | YolaNDi | chapPIe | nd | A | P | |
| 15 | BIlly Dunston | PInk cadillac | bi | X | I | |
| 16 | Nurse InGRid | frankenPImp | gr | o | r | |
| 17 | Nick RAMsey | teen sPIrit | am | s | e |
This new set of letters forms the message ARTEMISIA AND DAXOS. These are characters in the same-length-title movie 300 Rise of an Empire. That title contains "PI"; the corresponding letters in the character text is the solution, AX.