Update: We now have a post explaining how to make your very own multi-force matrix!

“I’ve got something really special here. An old friend of mine just got in touch with me. She was fired from Coca-Cola after working there in top management for the last 30 years. She knows for sure that it was for political reasons rather than the excuses they ginned up, but every lawyer she talks to says she should’ve kept better records since they don’t have enough to even get a reasonable settlement out of a wrongful termination suit.

“But she was also in charge of watching over this safe, which she has simply denied having. She says it contains the key for constructing the most secret part of the recipe for Coca-Cola, a massively valuable trade secret. In order to sue her for it, the Coke lawyers would have to give up the records she wants in discovery, so they haven’t said a word.

“They don’t think she can do anything with it anyway, since this massive padlock on the front has a code of who-knows-how-many digits, which would probably run out of batteries before she cracked it. And if she took it to someone who could cut it open, she’d be revealing she possesses stolen property and lose all her leverage…oh, by the way, none of you will mention any of this once you leave here, right? In fact, before we continue, would you mind each signing an NDA?

“Anyway, to keep it away from Coke’s private investigators, she’s entrusted it to me for the time being. But again, we can’t get inside it, so that’s not the exciting thing you’re here for.

“Seeing the writing on the wall, days before they took her badge and had security escort her to her car, she slipped into her coworkers’ offices and got copies of Coke’s secure backup plan. Each of the four senior executives at the top of her division had one of these…

“You see the numbers arranged into a diamond pattern? Each executive was entrusted with a number that indicates the proportion of one of the ingredients of Coke’s proprietary spice blend. Not the amounts of vanilla, cinnamon, or coca extract, but the really hard to tease apart amounts of essential oils in the elusive ‘Merchandise 7X,’ like orange, lime, nutmeg, and coriander.

“They refused to ever write down what the number was, but they did write which ingredients it would represent — you can see that here in the corners. And they knew which numbers, one from each executive’s sheet — one top number, one bottom number, one left number, and one right number — would add up to the number for their particular ingredients. They usually shared pieces of this information with their assistants. That way, no one person had the whole recipe and even if someone managed to get hold of all these code sheets — as my friend did — they couldn’t reconstruct it. Yet, if the whole board died together in a tragic accident, the recipe could still be reconstructed from these sheets by those who knew which numbers to pick.

“Or, if all else failed, inside that safe is the master key to decode the whole thing. Although, security measures required that the person who knew the code to this safe didn’t know who had the safe or where it was and vice versa, which is why we have no way of getting into that safe.

“Nonetheless, I think we can tap into a little thing here called beginner’s luck. Have any of you ever tried cooking or baking experimentally, trying to make new flavors from spices and the like? I need four people with good intuition for ingredient proportion ideally, or at least who are good with numbers.

“Okay, you four take these, whichever one you want. A blank diamond for the lime and coriander, a blank diamond for the nutmeg and neroli, and…you get the idea. You each get a marker as well.

“Stand in a line right here. I’ll pass you the code sheets one by one. You need to choose one number off the sheet and copy it into the same position in your blank diamond, then X it out on the code sheet to let the people down the line know you’ve already claimed it. So on the first sheet, Bob will have four to choose from, and then you, Jane, can choose any of the remaining three. And Nancy down there at the end will always just end up with whatever number they left, so if this doesn’t work out, we’ll know you’re not at all to blame. Each time you choose, you’ll need to choose from a different position—choose a top if you’re missing a top or a left if you’re missing a left. At the end, all four of you will have divided the 16 numbers on the four code sheets up among you so you each have all four quarters of your diamonds filled in. Does that make sense? Is it not clear to anyone?

“Good. And try to think about what amounts might make the most sense for the ingredients you’re picking. Go for big numbers if you think Coca-Cola tastes like it should have a lot of that flavor. Use your intuition. All right, let’s get started. Here’s the first code sheet. Once you’ve copied and marked off a number, pass it down the line.

“Nice choices everyone. You’re doing great. Here’s the second sheet.

“Here’s the third.

“And here’s the last. No choices to be made at all here. If you all chose correctly, you’ll each get exactly the number you need to finish your diamond.

“Excellent. Now if you’d please add up the numbers you’ve selected. Feel free to use a calculator if you have one, and at least double check your sums to be sure. Check each other’s too. I don’t want this whole thing to fail just because of a math mistake.”

“Alright, what numbers did you get? 14 drams lime and coriander, okay. What’s a dram? I don’t know. Units don’t matter as long as they’re the same. I’m pretty sure it’s volume. How about yours? 16 drams nutmeg. That…huh. A little strong compared to the lime? And you? 27 drams orange. Wow. And you? 24 drams lemon? That…okay, I’ve been tinkering with the recipe trying to get it right for some time, and that’s definitely wrong. Analytical labs have broken down the coke syrup and they know there are MUCH fewer of the compounds in coriander than the nutmeg. It’s not even that you got the numbers switched up. Those just don’t make sense as the numbers to begin with.

“But… wait… put them all together and you would get… 8 digits… and we know the lock’s code is at least 8 digits long… so maybe we have it backwards and the supposed recipe is actually… hmm… which would mean that what’s inside the safe… I mean, even if I’m not going crazy here, you’d have to just be extremely lucky to…

“Okay, let’s try it… but in what order? Lowest to highest? Here, would you come punch this into the lock for me? Thanks. Ready? 1-4-1-6-2-4-2-7. Press the unlock button. Nothing? Maybe the other way. Let’s go again. Ready? 2-7-2-4-1-6-1-4. Unlock. Still no?

“Okay, well, that rules out the obvious. Let’s assume that if you guys had the right intuition to figure out the right numbers to begin with, you also might have the intuition to figure out the right order. Let’s poll the audience. Whose number do you think goes first? Okay, you. What was your number? Alright, 24 first. Whose number should come second? Okay, that’s you… yours was? 16 second. And which of these two should come third? Her? Okay, yours was 14 right? So that means the audience thinks they should go… Are you ready to punch it in? 2-4-1-6-1-4-2-7. Unlock. That’s the unlock sound! Pull it down! Take it off! Open it!

“Lemme see…

“This is definitely a recipe… it looks like it could be… wait… yes… it’s definitely a cola recipe.

“But… what’s this? There’s a lot more corn syrup than I’d expect? And less cinnamon oil? And the lemon and lime seems too high. And it’s calling for a lower carbonation level… what’s the date on this thing…

“…wait… 1985???

“FUCK! It’s the damn New Coke recipe.”

End scene.

METHOD

The sheets described above are the pages of this pdf:

If the instructions are followed as described, the four sums at the end will always be 14, 16, 24, 27 in some order. It’s basically just a four-way simultaneous matrix force. The important thing is that the code sheets get passed down a line one at a time. It won’t work out if everyone chooses simultaneously and passes them around a circle. But the order the sheets are passed don’t matter.

As for the padlock for the strongbox, you’ll need one of these.

It allows codes of 8 digits to be set, and it allows you to set as many working codes as you like. There are 24 possible ways to order the four above numbers, so set it up to open for 22 of them, not including the increasing or decreasing order ones. (These intentional failures are included to sell the idea that only one code will open it.)

VARIATIONS

It is possible to force the numbers to come out in a certain order. All that matters is that the first sheet (the one with 1,4,7,9) tells the players which number belongs to them. In this presentation, it could be that one of the executives has gotten sloppy and written in which ingredient each number corresponds to, or the “friend” has somehow gotten a hint from someone. The other three sheets can be free choices. Whoever picked 1 will end with 14, whoever picked 4 will end with 16, and so on.

It would also be possible to use the transpose of the underlying matrix instead so that, e.g., each sheet has one of the four numbers 1, 4, 7, or 9 as its “top” number, and that sheet is marked with that ingredient. So you can say, “Don’t take your ‘top’ number until you see your chosen ingredient on the code page. We have it from a good source the ingredient at the top of the page corresponds to the number in the ‘top’ position.” If you use this variation, it might add something if you don’t know which person picked which ingredient, but the final order of the “passcode” depends on the alphabetical order of the ingredients or something like that, so it seems like there’s an extra source of choice or randomness that doesn’t really end up mattering.

These variations lose the free choice of order for the final code, but let you “predict” the forced code by some means other than buying and programming an expensive digital padlock. For instance you could have it tattooed under a barcode on the back of your neck, and when someone scans the barcode, it rings up as HEEE HAW: