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.

  • southsamurai
    22•8 months ago

    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.