Cracking the Code

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."

I found myself gazing thoughtfully at the quote that I had just deciphered. Albert Einstein. The encrypted text arrived in a curt e-mail from "M"-the mastermind behind the ThemEarthMeteors puzzles that peppered campus for five weeks last fall and that re-emerged this past month. The quote, which was his only response to my request for an interview with him, says much about M and the mission of his mysterious organization.

ThemEarthMeteors-which anagrammatically rearranges to reveal its actual name, "The Master Theorem"-fills a certain void on Columbia's campus, its coded fliers serving as outlets for mystery-loving students. The mission statement reads: "Look around you. The world is filled with so many fascinating curiosities, and the drive to discover and explore and learn is what keeps life progressing... and interesting. In that spirit, we very proudly seek out all sorts of puzzles, riddles, and more generally, anything intriguing."

The cryptic fliers that have appeared over the course of the past four weeks contain little more than the puzzle, a deadline, and a URL, themearthmeteors.com. A quote from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, reminiscent of the Einstein quote, lines the bottom of every flier: "The only man never to be redeemed is the man without passion." The Web site itself is also mysteriously barren, featuring the signature "M" logo, flanked by two images of fiery earths, which gives way to a password entry field.

When I failed to evoke a satisfactory response from M the good old-fashioned way for this story, I tried a different tack: I crafted my own flier exactly mirroring ThemEarthMeteors', complete with my own deadline, quotes, and, of course, a puzzle. The flier contained a straightforward letter again requesting an interview, but this time, it included an embedded code of my own. My original intent of slipping the letter to a member when they fliered fell through, and with a looming deadline, I was forced to lamely e-mail M the PDF as a last resort. It was all worth it when, two days later, my inbox refreshed to reveal a new message from M. He consented to three questions.

Already, several Internet forums had begun discussing TMT. On one message board for code crackers, an alleged Columbia poster declared that he made it his goal to rip down every TMT flier he saw, while another one conspired to infiltrate an upcoming TMT meeting. On Bwog, several commenters have expressed confusion regarding the posters while others have mocked the group and still others have attempted to tackle the puzzles and defend their value. In soliciting student responses, I found that the vast majority of the people I spoke to had either never bothered to look closely at one or didn't see the point of them.

M responded to the student response to his puzzles, saying: "There are always those who are intrigued by life, yet there are also many who are not. A lack of individual curiosity is regrettable, but a lack of curious individuals is inconsequential-they are simply not useful."

Instead of working to solve the problems, some have spent their energies attempting to bypass the system. Ron Gejman, CC '10, who volunteered the TMT mission statement from his successful hack into its Web site, explained his motivation, saying: "I have not solved any of them [the puzzles] for lack of time and desire. I was, however, confused as to what they were all about."

Regarding these efforts, M only said, "Sometimes the seemingly easier way to solve a problem is the most unfulfilling." He concluded with another Einstein quote: "Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding."

The final puzzle of the semester comes out this week, with a deadline of Sunday, April 29 at 11:59 p.m.