In early 2005, I had just begun my second career as a public relations executive at the firm Weber Shandwick. Prior to Weber Shandwick, I was a journalist for eight years at a number of Bay Area tech publications, including Multimedia World (a sister publication to PC World), DV Magazine, Maximum PC, CNET and Streaming Media. When the dot com bubble burst in 2002, it took with it a number of high tech writing jobs including mine. I tried my hand at freelancing for a few months, but quickly discovered it wasn’t enough to cover my share of the mortgage every month… Plus, I just wasn’t into the constant hustling you had to do from assignment to assignment.At the age of 35, I couldn’t really afford to start an entirely new career where I’d have to work my way up the corporate ladder from the mailroom. Public relations was the only lateral move a journalist could make where they wouldn’t have to start out on the ground floor and still make enough money to cover the rent so to speak.
One afternoon, a few months into my new job, I was working out of the firm’s Silicon Valley office, and I had a question for John Belamy, my boss and mentor at the time, on how to handle a sticky situation I was facing with a current client of mine. When I entered John’s office, he was staring into his notebook screen with a pained look on his face.
“What’s up,” I asked? “Is this a good time?”
“Yes, come in. What’s going on?”
“I need your thoughts on how to deal with a problem that’s come up with Grommertech.”
Grommertech was a company that specialized in Internet video compression algorithms. You’ve heard of MPEG-4? Grommertech was one of five technology companies in the MPEG-4 consortium. The company had developed a new, super-efficient algorithm that they wanted incorporated into the new MPEG-4 specification, but they weren’t making any headway with the four other group members. This was partly due to the fact that Grommertech represented a potential threat to the other consortium members, who, without naming names, were all huge consumer electronic manufacturers. Agreeing to Grommertech’s to include Grommertech’s algorithm into MPEG-4 speicification would mean that four other consumer electronic manufacturers would have to re-architect all of the graphics chips in their current product lines… And to do that would cost millions of dollars.
Grommertech, in contrast, was essentially a small startup that was backed by a couple of well-regarded venture capital companies… What’s worse, is that they were quickly running out of cash, hence them hiring Weber Shandwick as their PR firm. Our strategy for them was to get their story in the media, which, in turn, would give them the leverage they would need to force the nay-saying consortium members to adopt their algorithm into the final MPEG-4 specification. And if that should fail, it was hoped that the public profile we created for them would make them a suitable acquisition target.
John checked his Blackberry briefly and then redirected his attention to me. “What’s the problem?”
“I’ve been trying to set up calls with a Grommertech exec and reporters from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and The Financial Times. None of them are interested because Grommertech’s not a publicly-traded company and their annual revenues are less than $500 million a year. If I don’t get them an interview with a tier one pub soon, they’re doing to drop us as a firm.”
John thought for a moment and then leaned forward in his chair. “Make it a bigger story. This isn’t about Grommertech. It’s about the future of video on the Internet. We both know that video takes up an incredible amount of bandwidth, and it’s getting increasingly harder for Internet Service Providers to reliably deliver that video to their customers. Get on the phone with a nationally-known ISP and see if you can get one of their executives to talk. If they’re a go, then package the execs from both companies as part of a one-two punch. Journalists are a lazy bunch these days. If you do all of the upfront legwork for them, you stand a better chance selling the story.”
“Brilliant,” I said and turned to head back to my desk.
“Hold on one sec…”
“Yes,” I said pivoting back towards his office.
“I was wondering if I could pick your brain on a problem I’ve been struggling with for the past week.”
“Sure. Not sure I’ll be able to help, but...”
John motioned for me to sit down. “I don’t know if I ever mentioned this, but I’m a member of Mensa… if you know what that is.”
I had heard of Mensa. I understood it to be an elite organization made up of super geniuses from around the world. Oh, and Marilyn Vos Savant, the puzzle creator for PARADE section of the Sunday paper was supposedly a member. But that’s as far as my knowledge of the organization went. “Yes,” I said. “I’ve heard of it.”
“Every year the organization’s board develops an annual brain teaser called ‘The Mensa Challenge,’ and only Mensa members are invited to participate. Sometimes there are multiple winners, and sometimes the puzzle is so flippin’ hard no one figures it out. The first person to solve the challenge wins $10,000. I have been pondering this year’s puzzle for the past week and have hit a wall. I was wondering if I might be able to pick your brain.”
“What’s the puzzle?”
“There’s a house in the middle of an affluent San Francisco neighborhood that has an expensive Picasso painting in it. The goal is to steal the paining while giving the impression that no crime has occurred.”
“That’s it?”
“Here’s the catch. The house has two alarms; one alarm is rigged to all of the house’s exterior doors and windows, and the other alarm’s a motion detector inside the house…”
My mind started racing a mile a minute. It was just the sort of creative brainstorming that I loved to do. Immediately I blurted out, “Why couldn’t someone just smash the door in, take the painting and walk right out it? Even if the alarm was triggered, it would take the cops at least ten minutes to get to the scene. And by that time, you’re long gone with the painting.”
“That would make sense, unfortunately, it’s not that simple. As I mentioned earlier, part off the challenge is to make it look like a crime never occurred. The smashed in door and alarms going off would be a dead giveaway.”
“Hmmm. I don’t know. Email me the scenario, and I’ll give it some more thought tonight.
When I got back to my desk, I made a call to the head of corporate communications at VeroNet, one of the nation’s leading ISPs to see if they would be interested in providing me with an executive to go on the record with my guy to talk about the future of video on the Internet. The good news was they liked the idea and would find an executive who would work with me.
While I waited for VeroNet to get back to me, I reviewed the Mensa Challenge email, which I’ve had to cobble together from memory, as the original email has long since been deleted, but you’ll get the gist:
Tuesday, January 5, 2005:
Dick and Jane live in an idyllic two-story house in the Presidio neighborhood of San Francisco. Both Dick and Jane work at high tech companies based in Silicon Valley, roughly a 45 minute commute each way from their house. Their mornings consist of the same routine every day. Up at 5:00 a.m., breakfast of granola, wheat toast with real butter and a Yoplait yogurt. After they check their email one last time and make sure their cat has enough food and water to get him through the day, Dick sets the house’s alarms (one for the external doors and windows and a motion sensor alarm for inside the house).
Quickly, Dick and Jane head down a narrow hallway to the garage, jump into their BMW 354 SI, and they’re powering the garage door down by 6:00 a.m. sharp.
Dick and Jane also own a very expensive Picasso painting named “Woman on Blocks” that was painted during the eccentric artist’s blue period, and it’s hanging on a wall in their second floor bedroom. Dick inherited the 4-foot x 3-foot painting from his grandfather Harold, who received the painting as a gift from Pablo because Harold had saved the artist’s fiancé’s life in a house fire the prior year. The painting is extremely well known and had hung in London’s Wellington gallery until Harold’s passing and the painting’s ownership was transferred to Dick who decided that the painting would look better in his home than a Brit gallery halfway around the world.
Twenty minutes into their commute, Dick realized that he had left some important documents on the nightstand next to their bed and turned the car around to retrieve them.
Can you steal the Picasso, make it look like a crime never occurred, and do it before Dick and Jane return home? You have one day to plan and execute the heist.
Each participant is allowed one shot at a solution and everyone can ask one question. All questions and answers are available to everyone at www.mensa.org/2004challenge.
Below I’ve recreated a few of the sample questions and answers that were submitted by participants:
Q: Can the alarms be deactivated by cutting power to the house?
A: No. Both alarm systems have battery backup. In the event of a power failure, the alarm company sends a representative out to investigate the cause of the power failure.
Q: Can the locks outside of the house be picked?
A: All external doors to the house have biometric locks built into them. They can only be opened with Dick and Jane’s fingerprints.
Q: Do they have a cleaning service?
A: Yes, but they only come on Saturdays when Dick and Jane are at home.
Q: Does the house have any skylights?
A: No.
Q: Does the crime have to take place while they’re out, or can it happen while they’re still in the house?
A: The crime has to occur during the window presented in the story.
Q: Is it possible to infiltrate the alarm company?
A: Yes, technically it would be, but the alarm company requires a two-week background check on all new employees before they’re hired. And you only have one day to figure out how to secure the painting.
Later that night I was in my backyard, having a couple of beers and trying my best to think like a criminal. I ran a number of scenarios over in my head, but for the life of me, couldn’t figure out how I’d get in the house with out tripping the alarms. It wasn’t until later that evening when I was looking outside my living room window that I saw my neighbor across the street pull out of her garage. I watched her closely as she drove away and then it hit me.
“That’s it,” I said to myself. And for the next couple of hours I crafted my plan of attack.
The next day when I got into work, I went straight to John’s office. “Okay, I think I may have discovered a way to pull this off.”
“Really,” John said incredulously.
“If this idea works and you win, I want half of the winnings.”
“I can work with that... Hit me.”
I closed the door to John’s office, pulled out a couple of pages of handwritten notes that I had taken the night before and begin to pace back and forth like a caged animal as I revealed my plan.
“Okay, the first clue in the puzzle is that the story takes place in early January.”
“Yes.”
“In the story, Dick and Jane leave the house at 6:00 a.m. exactly. In early January, it’s still dark outside at 6:00 a.m. That’s important and works to our advantage.”
John clasped his hands together and cocked an eyebrow.
“The next clue is that Dick and Jane’s house has an automatic garage door.”
John slumped into the seat. “Yes… And?”
“And by law, automatic garage doors have to have a safety trip sensor at least six inches from the floor. They require this so that little kids won’t accidentally be crushed to death when the garage door comes down… That right there is our window of opportunity… We know that Dick and Jane are in a hurry. We know that Dick’s not thinking carefully, because he realizes halfway into his commute that he left some important papers on his nightstand.”
“Your point being…?”
“From the time you press the button, it takes about 12 seconds for an electric garage door to close… This is where the basketball comes into play.”
“The basketball?”
“By the time Dick and Jane are driving down the street, you’ve still got a one or two-second window before the garage door closes all the way. Rolling the basketball into the garage at the last second would trip the motion sensor, causing the garage door to open back up again. Voila, now you’re in the garage. In a few seconds, you can pull cord that disengages the garage door from the power source and manually close the door back down so as to not draw any suspicions from the neighbors. Once the door is down, you can quickly reconnect the garage door to its power source. The garage door light should stay illuminated for at least a minute, giving you enough time to find the main garage light switch and the garage door button that can be activated from inside the house.
“Interesting approach,” John said. “But that still doesn’t get you inside the house.”
“Right. That brings us to our next clue. In the story, Dick and Jane ‘…run down the hallway to the garage.’”
“How is that a clue?”
“Anyone who knows anything about home floor plan design and building codes knows that you don’t design a door that opens into a hallway. It’s awkward. Logistically, doors always open outwards from hallways.”
“Your point being…?”
“The door has to open into the garage!... That means the hinges to the door have to be on the inside of the garage! And we all know that hinge bolts can be popped out with a simple flathead screwdriver and a hammer, enabling anyone to take the door right off the frame AND easily put it back without anyone being the wiser.”
“Hmmm. That’s pretty good,” John said. “But it still leaves us with the internal motion sensor alarm.”
“I thought of that. Remember, Dick and Jane have a cat.”
“And…?”
“Obviously the people who installed the motion sensor alarm would have to take the cat into consideration. The cat would need to be able to walk around during the day and jump on stuff, which means they would have to set the detector to at least anything above four feet. And because the cat would most likely be going up and down the stairs during the day, they would have to angle the motion sensor so the stairs weren’t part of its scanning radius.”
John leaned forward in his chair and rubbed his chin. “So you would enter the house on your hands and knees…”
“Don’t forget you’ve got a forged copy of the painting with you as well.”
“Right. To replace the one we’re taking… Until we get to the stairs…”
At this point, I could barely contain my excitement. “When we reach the stairs, we can stand upright, head to the bedroom, swap the paintings and head back to the garage.”
“Where we would put the door back on its hinges, press the house’s internal garage door opener and jump out without tripping the door’s motion sensor.”
“Exactly! And all of this can obviously be done in the 40-minute window before Dick and Jane return home! And, of course, there’s no evidence that a crime was ever committed.”
“Fucking brilliant,” John exclaimed.
John packaged up the scenario I spelled out for him in an email to the Mensa folks and two days later they notified him that he had won. And true to his word, John gave me half of his winnings. The $5,000 I got was immediately put into a special bank account to help fund RetarDEAD, a zombie comedy that was being written, produced and directed by my best friend Dan West and myself. But that’s a whole other story.
Oh, and the VeroNet exec worked better than I could have imagined. Not only did the exec paint an apocalyptic picture of how video bit rates today have the potential to bring the Internet to its knees, but the story was picked up by both the Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press. The AP story alone was picked up by 1,200 newspapers around the country. And, in the end, my company’s algorithm was incorporated into the MPEG-4 specification.
