Passphrase Competition: We have a winner – again!

So I tweeted this on Friday, August 14, 2015:

Passphrase_Competition
And now the results are in, and we have a winner. Again. Yes, I've done this one before. Let me explain that 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, I decided not to put my 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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I actually made the first run of this little competition back in February 2012, and blogged about it here. Some info from my side:

  1. "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 is also 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. I have to admit that when I came up with this in 2012, I was just as narrowminded and didn't think of binary or morse code as "language". I was "obsessed" with my own Norwegian and English as my 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?").
  2. "Grammatical sense" != Grammatically correct.
    As lots of ads will show you, many phrases and sentences doesn't use a . (period) at the end.
  3. Confusing example?
    I also did the example passphrase "This is a password." with a period at the end, specifically to exemplify a grammatically correct sentence in order to lock your 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 we 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 I've done this with many audiences, and it is actually very entertaining at times. Let me know of any interesting results and interpretations observed!