Per Thorsheim tweeted this on Friday, August 14, 2015:
And now the results are in, and there is a winner. Again. Yes, this competition has been done before. The explanation for that is at the bottom of this post, but first:
WINNER:
01010100011010000110100101110011001000000110100101110011001000000110000100100000011100000110000101110011011100110111011101101111011100100110010000101110
This is a password.
2 distinct characters. You recognize the language, right?
@hallvaren
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2ND PLACE:
יש שיש שש ששי
3 distinct characters: י, ש, space (Hebrew)
"there's a marble counter, rejoiced Sassi"
@omervk
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Honorable mentions:
@blueg3
子子子子子子子子子子子子
neko no ko no koneko, shishi no ko no kojishi
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ono_no_Takamura
While this would be the winner with only 1 symbol and 12 interpretations of it, not put the entire trust into the Wikipedia story…
@runningdogx
AAAA
1 distinct character, using an artificial language with several different definitions for the word/symbol A (e.g. used as a noun, verb, and article)
Also some great comments related to huge-alphabet languages and more!
@dfranke
submitted a single ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic, which when repeated says "Run away, run away" etc.
@mjmdavis
to tot to a t
4 distinct characters
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The first iteration of this little competition ran back in February 2012, and blogged about it here. Some additional notes:
- "Using any language" can be discussed.
The normal understanding would be a way humans communicate. Sign language is a way for humans to communicate, and so are emojis and much more. Morse code is represented with long or short (binary) signalling. So is binary by itself with 1's and 0's. Thorsheim has admitted that when he came up with this in 2012, he was just as narrowminded and didn't think of binary or morse code as "language". He was "obsessed" with his own Norwegian and English as his second language, but was curious about other spoken/written languages like Finnish (Thx @Mikko for "Tämä mätä mätäs tässä." 5 unique, incl. space), Hungarian (Thx @adiz0r for "Te tetted e tettetett tetted, te tettetett tettek tettese!", 56 chars, 9 unique) or Indonesian (Thx kontan for "Kek kok kuku kaki kakakku kok kaku kek?"). - "Grammatical sense" != Grammatically correct.
As lots of ads will show you, many phrases and sentences don't use a . (period) at the end. - Confusing example?
Thorsheim also used the example passphrase "This is a password." with a period at the end, specifically to exemplify a grammatically correct sentence in order to lock participants' thoughts onto grammatically correct, and "forget" about "grammatical sense". Reading the assignment from start to finish before starting can sometimes be a good thing.
All of this challenges the ways people think of minimum length requirements usually expressed in number of characters (symbols) used, "characters allowed" in passwords, how language in long sentences – stories – can be explained using very few and unique symbols and more.
Perhaps very geeky, but it is actually very entertaining at times. Readers are encouraged to share any interesting results and interpretations observed!