This time, with rules.
The other post got me thinking, here’s my version.
For 5 million dollars, the task is the hide a paperclip in your home from a professional investigator. You have 15 minutes to hide it, they have 12 hours and subcontractors to find it. You cannot leave your house or have anything shipped in during your 15 minutes. You have to leave immediately after the 15 minutes is up, and you cannot have the paperclip on your person. Any family members, friends, and all pets will also be removed from the premises, and they aren’t allowed to have the paperclip.
You must be able to produce the original paperclip at the end in order to win the challenge. It is marked in some way that you don’t know but the investigator can verify. Absolutely no substitutions. You can bend the paperclip, but not cut it.
The paperclip must be inside the building. Not in a shared entryway, not outside the walls in any way. Between the studs of the outside walls of whatever you own or rent as living space are as far as you can go.
Any damage done by the investigator or subcontractors will be repaired back the way it was at no charge, win or lose. They are not allowed to harm the structural integrity of your home/apartment.
I put the paperclip in with other paperclips at my office supply warehouse. Do I live in an office supply warehouse? Yes. The investigators will have to rifle though millions of loose paperclips and thousands of boxed paperclips. They have to search my shipping and my receiving areas. As I’m leaving, a woman sees me. She says “can you sell me some office supplies?” . She’s the lead investigators. I say no. We make love all night. In the morning the cops come and I escape in one of their uniforms. I tell her to meet me in Mexico but I go to Canada. I don’t trust her. Besides, I love the cold. Thirty years later I get a postcard. I have a son. And he’s the Chief of Police. This is where the story gets interesting: I tell her to meet me in Paris by the Trocadero. She’s been waiting for me all these years. She’s never taken another lover. I don’t care. I don’t show up. I go to Berlin. That’s where I shipped the paperclip.
What even is this? What did I just read?
It’s a paraphrased quote from the office.
Ohhhh
Jokes on them, I keep a bunch of old screws, nails, etc. They come in handy. I’d disturb those containers and mix in part the box of paperclips I already have. Then dump the others around the house randomly.
Then, tilt my fridge and hide the correct one under it, in the little lip formed by where the metal is rolled.
Unless they actually lift the fridge and turn it almost upside down, that damn thing isn’t coming out of that lip.
By the time they’ve gone through all of the fake hiding spots and determined that all of the other clips are the wrong ones, a big portion of the time is gone (and I’m assuming the clip somehow identifiable and that they have a way of doing so, otherwise they’re screwed from the beginning)
Nobody with sense is going to turn the fridge over to check under it unless they’ve exhausted other places.
It’s all about wasting their time and making use of human habits, not necessarily a super secret spot.
But, that spot rules out metal detectors, and won’t have visible signs of recent movement (because I keep the kitchen absurdly clean, there’s no built up dust or grime under it to show the movement). If I hadn’t had to turn the fridge on its side to get under they’re for some repairs, I wouldn’t know the lip existed in the first place. So the chances of any of the investigators and/or subcontractors also knowing that a decades old model of refrigerator happens to have a rolled metal lip is pretty damn low.
They’d do the human thing of looking under it, or even lifting it off the feet and checking under those, but not look further because any of the other places under there would allow a little piece of metal to fall out freely when their first search happened.
But, there’s a similar spot on the interior of our washing machine that I found when replacing a switch. Same kind of deal, but the area where the washer is isn’t as clean, so it would be obvious enough.
Nice!
And yes, I did say that they have a way of identifying which clip is the one you are supposed to hide.
Straighten it and use a needle to push it into a tube of toothpaste.
That’s a good one. Can’t metal detect inside a metal tube, not an obvious hiding spot at all
And it’s usable. Might need to brush up before my 15 minutes is over. Even less suspicious. (I think).
What about a CT/xray though? Id imagine investigator would be motivated enough to use one
What sort of x ray machine could be transported to the site? What size things would fit in a portable x ray machine? How long would each exposure take?
Xrays can be pretty immediately viewable they are used by airport security all the time there are smaller portable imaging machines that are more portable but really if i was investigator id start by having my team removing everything from the place and transporting it to the machine. The one half does the imaging and the other half starts tearing into the residence. Whoever finishes first gets to look through every xray image so that every person has inspected every image at least once
Oh right. It would take some time, but not 12 hours to run everything in the house through the X-ray. Including breaking down larger items for scanning.
Yea and some items could be grouped together like toothbrushes and pens/pencils. It would definitely at least take half the day but if assuming unlimited funds/manpower you could have multiple machines manned by teams
Oh man. Seems there would have to be a limit on manpower and machinery available to the subcontractors
I’d unbend it and slip it into the end of an unterminated Ethernet cable and then terminate it. I’ve got boxes of cables that may or may not have ends on them, both factory, home made and hybrid (repairs) cables, and it takes no time to terminate it. Slip the unbent clip into the cable, terminate and throw into the middle of the box, maybe even mix up all the cables so they start to nest.
Good luck fuckers.
Same answer as before. Bend it straight and put it in either a mechanical pencil or the ink tube of a pen.
Yep, I think that has a chance. Given how many people came up with the same idea, I wouldn’t give it the highest chance of staying hidden for 12 hours.
I would simply straighten it and slide it into one of the thousands of corrugated Amazon boxes my wife keeps ordering that make up the half ton of cardboard in my basement. Good luck.
A little metal detector work by one of the subcontractors would eliminate all the boxes, and sort through all the staples in said boxes, within 12 hours. I think they’d find it.
I mean are they allowed to destroy my boxes? Because if not, then I have serious doubt. If so, it would take a couple hours to burn them all and find my paperclip.
Yes, they are allowed to destroy the boxes. Each one that gets destroyed or damaged will be replaced afterwards, so that the place is left the same as they found it.
Straighten it then install it under the rim strip of a bike wheel. Reinstall the tire and leave it alone. It would be invisible to metal detector and there’s a good chance none of the investigators know how to change a bike tire. I’d take my tire levers with me
Unscrew the aerator on the kitchen sink, bend the paperclip so it makes a loop that holds it tight inside of the faucet, and push it up inside the faucet. Then reinstall the aerator.
You can’t metal detect it, it won’t affect water flow, and it would be simple to retrieve.
Straighten it, drill a small hole perpendicular to the hinge of one of your doors, put it inside and cover the hole up. If there’s enough time, add some paint to it, otherwise just use the sawdust mixed with some glue. The hole is certainly tiny enough to get unnoticed and any metal detector would hopefully pick up the larger metal hinge instead of the paperclip. Finally, if you also paint it up, it would practically be invisible. Just make sure you use a paint that doesn’t smell too strongly.
This guy murders. Username checks out too
Ooh, you wouldn’t even need to do that… knock the pins out of your door hinges, remove the door, put the unbent paperclip INSIDE one of the pins and re-install.
I would straighten it out and then sew it into a pair of jeans near the fly. They would need to inspect every fly seam in every pair of jeans to find it.
Drill a tiny hole behind the strike plate of a door frame, stick the straightened paperclip in, patch the tiny hole, reinstall the strike plate.
By the time they consider looking there, the patching compound should be dried and not easily distinguishable from the painted wood, except on very close inspection.
I’m not sure it’s possible. A team of people with the singular goal of finding something with no regard litterally anything else could strip a home in 12 hours.
That said, I would drill a small hole on the backside of one of the roof joists in the far corner of the attic, put the paperclip in that and then use wood putty to seal the hole.
I’m not sure it’s possible.
The time I got caught growing weed, several officers “searched” my home and they literally just didn’t see a massive jar of crushed weed I had on my kitchen table.
Like in plain sight, and some 70g of cannabis, in a large glass jar. And those cops did not ignore it on purpose.
It’s a different situation but still
They were so hyper focused on looking for hiding spots they missed the obvious lul
I put it through a laminator and cut it into a business card size. I then go up into the attic and press it down into the uninsulated interior wall between my office and son’s room. The size of the laminate should allow me to flex it slightly and pin it between the walls with tension. If they try to remove the wall it will fall into the crawlspace below the house and be caught by a pad of insulation.
Alternatively, tuck it into the barrel of the washing machine in said laminate. It won’t rattle and without fully disassembling it you won’t be able to retrieve it.
Rules here say “can’t cut it”.
I presume they mean cut the laminate, that would make sense then as to business card size. Still not cutting the paperclip
Cutting the clip wouldn’t work, but cutting the laminate is within the rules
Straighten the paper clip and slip it inside the binding of an old copy of Britannica I have. I got it second hand from a public library, so it has quite a few of the old style anti-theft tags hidden throughout; it also contains quite a few paper clips of many colors I once used as bookmarks.
I use the remaining time to clean the house, making sure to go into the bathroom more than once, moving the toilet tank lid and opening and shutting all of the cabinets every time. If I’m very lucky I’ll be just shutting the medicine cabinet audibly when the investigators walk in. (For those not familiar, many houses built in the mid 20th century in the US had slots in the back of the medicine cabinet where you were supposed to dispose of used razor blades.)
I think they’d tear the entire house apart trying to find that thing. There’s a small chance someone would notice paper clips on the Brittanica and start checking for more. Whether they find it depends on whether they have access to x rays or a metal detector.
I have no doubt that they would, but that’s not one of the variables I’m trying to control. As far as I can tell, time and volume are the only two things that I can play with. They have a 30-minute timer, and cannot take the load-bearing walls down. That means there’s a volume constraint, no matter how many people they have available they can only fit so many in one space. That limits the amount of time they have to actually search, assuming they empty the dwelling. If they don’t empty the dwelling, it sharply limits the number of people they can have searching at any one time. Heavy equipment like an x-ray machine also limits that volume.
With respect to the Britannica, if you’re familiar with them you know they are massive and this one just happened to be my primary research source in high school. I cannot understate the number of flags and paper clips simply destroying those bindings right now. If someone does notice it, I’m relying on running out the clock with them checking every one they see first.
They’d have to stay within the home, but they do have 12 hours to check through things. So, they cannot empty the things to the outside, they have to sort through things inside. I guess that eliminates the xray idea.
But a metal detector and 12 hours time would put the odds in their favor.
I bribe one of the underpaid contractors to hang onto it. Or i bribe the investigator to not find it. You didnt say he would get paid. I leave out an assortment of good foods/snacks and the remotes for the tv/controller so they can enjoy the day off. I then check in for my own nice spa day for my own day off
An unpaid investor would be barely motivated to search anything. Of course they’re paid.
Even a well paid crew member would do a lot for a million dollars or so. Might need to go higher if they know how much you stand to win.
Id totally be down to split the 5 mil evenly between all of us. We could all use some extra money these days
That would probably work out for you.
