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.
Put in into the wall using an existing screw hole for a photo then rehang the photo. Take a hammer to the wall later to get it back.
Hmm. I think tearing down all the drywall would be a logical step for the investigator, given that they have extra help. I think they would find it within 12 hours.
Time becomes the constraint, they can’t just start smashing walls, that makes everything around harder to search. With something the size of a paperclip they could easily miss it if they just hammer a hole between each stud.
They would have to check the entire room as best they can before they start smashing things and sorting through the rubble… Hmm yes, 12 hours is not too long to give them.
Maybe but there are a lot of wires and pipes running through the walls too. They would spend longer rebuilding the house if they broke every wall and took apart every appliance
They have unlimited time and money on to put the place back together. The only incentive they have to avoid tearing things apart is that finding the paperclip early in the day makes a short day for them, and bragging rights.
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Hmm
I didn’t factor in interrogation. The competitor would leave the premises without contacting the investigator.
No interrogation, no spying on you as you leave. Checking for the paperclip on your person is done by a separate person/machine, away from the investigator or any of their crew.
I think 12 hours of interrogation is long enough to break anyone.
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Aw man, I forgot to add a stipulation that you can’t bribe the investigator.
Just tell them you want your lawyer present ez
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.
Yeah right, I know exactly what you’re trying to do Paperclip boy! I’m NEVER telling you where I hid my Paperclip! Just give it up already!
Remove the wall plug, straighten the paper clip and insert it into the cable in between the wires, reinstall the wall plug.
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”.
Cutting the clip wouldn’t work, but cutting the laminate is within the rules
I presume they mean cut the laminate, that would make sense then as to business card size. Still not cutting the paperclip
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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
Poetry.
Firstly, if you can, get a bunch of boxes of paperclips and put them in plausible hiding places. Depending on how they are marked, it might buy you some time.
Some ideas:
- Lock it in a safe or strongbox only you know the code for.
- Unscrew a plug socket or light switch from the wall, put it in the cavity, and then reattach it.
- Get a photograph with a metal frame and slip the paperclip behind the picture itself.
- Find some other metalic easy to dismantle thing and hide the clip inside.
- Throw it down a drain or other hole, you can use a magnet on a string to retrieve it.
I assume the investigator will systematically remove everything and sweep it with a metal detector. Hopefully these hiding places won’t be as obvious.
I figured the investigator would start non-destructively, just moving things around, pickup up loose objects, etc.
But who knows, maybe they go full destruction mode immediately.
They do have a way of verifying, and it would buy some time as they pick up every single paperclip they find and verify it somehow.
I have several boxes of paperclips at home, spread them out and as decoys, and put the real paper clip inside a mechanical pencil after straightening it out and put the pencil into a box of many different pencils, make a tiny mark with a file and mix it up.
The paperclip boxes will distract them for a few hours, but logic will dictate that mixing the paper clip with other’s is dumb as I need to be able to retrieve it with in a resonable timeframe.
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.
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.
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.
Hide it in the insulation, then hide a bunch of dummy paperclips all through the house.
OP, please edit your title to make it a question.
Oh right, sorry.
