Extra 1
Extra 1: A brief Valentine's Day extra
Last night, Duan Rui and I made a bet. We would put each other’s Valentine’s Day presents in a box. The prerequisite was that we had to successfully unlock the other person’s newly-set phone password before being able to open the box. The loser would have to go to the cosmetic products counter on Valentine’s Day to try on lipstick.
After we exchanged phones, we exchanged the hints we had written for each other.
Hahaha, the hint I gave my Ge was an encrypted one, RDBZ, and unlocking the lock screen password wasn’t enough; he had to unlock the app’s letter-based password as well. This sort of password that needed a key to how my brain worked was one that he’d never think of in his lifetime.
The hint my Ge gave me was: ‘There are three bags of tangyuan[1]. The first bag is labelled as sesame filling, the second bag is labelled as peanut filling, and the third bag is labelled as a mix of sesame filling and peanut filling tangyuan. You already know that all three bags of tangyuan are labelled wrongly. What is the least number of tangyuan you must eat to correct the packaging?’
“Fuck, what kind of factory is this that can label everything wrongly? Won’t the Consumers’ Association report them?”
“Darling, I’ve unlocked it. The lock screen’s is 184226, and the password is WIGE.” Duan Rui tossed the unlocked phone back to me.
Me, “????? So fast? I haven’t even finished reading my hint??”
My Ge, “The lock screen is 18/4/2/26, the placings of the letters in the alphabet. The letter-based password is based on a cipher, right? Shift the alphabet back and find the corresponding letters of RDBZ, WIGE, I love Ge[2], right, the letter-based password is WIGE. If you had set the positions of the letters WIGE in the alphabet as the password, this problem could still be somewhat appreciated.”
Me, “How did you know how many letters to shift back…”
My Ge laughed, “21 letters, our birthdays. No matter what password you set, you can’t escape this number.”
Pleased with himself, he unlocked his phone in front of me, “The answer to mine is 1, just press six 1s, because you only need to try one from the bag that is labelled as mixed.” [3]
Me, “Don’t do this, Ge...let’s discuss nicely, we should do something meaningful on Valentine’s Day…”
---
I was at the cosmetics counter trying on lipstick.
The lady stationed there had an awkward, customer service smile as she came over to make recommendations, “May I ask...are you buying lipstick for your girlfriend…?”
I was just about to borrow this excuse and say yes yes yes when my Ge, resting next to the counter with his chin in his hand, smiled at the lady, “I’m buying it for my Meimei. Can’t I?”
Pissed me off to death.
Footnotes:
[1] - Tangyuan: a Chinese dessert consisting of balls of glutinous rice flour and water that are deep-fried or boiled and served in a hot broth or syrup. Tangyuan mostly look the same on the outside, regardless of their filling.
[2] - WIGE, I love Ge: I love Ge in Chinese is ‘Wo Ai Ge’, where ‘Ai’ is pronounced like the letter ‘I’ when spoken aloud.
[3] - Duan Rui’s hint: I took an embarrassingly long time to understand this, so here’s the explanation for those who want it. The bag labelled ‘mixed’ is not actually mixed, so all the tangyuan inside is either peanut filling or sesame filling. Let’s say you try one, and it’s peanut filling. So this bag labelled as ‘mixed’ should be labelled ‘peanut filling’. The remaining bags would be labelled ‘peanut filling’ and ‘sesame filling’, but the reality is that they are either a mixed bag, or a sesame filling bag. Since none of the bags are labelled correctly, the bag labelled ‘sesame filling’ must be mixed, while the bag labelled ‘peanut filling’ must contain sesame filling tangyuan.