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> Some years ago, Sanborn began charging $50 to review solutions, providing a speed bump to filter out wild guesses and nut cases

Oh man, oh man, this just gave me a great startup idea. What is the total addressable market of nutcases willing to pay $50 or more to have someone check whether they have cracked some difficult code? Perhaps even with a giant prize attached for cracking it?

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Even better: create an unbreakable code (one with no actual solution, but with a fake solution). Give people a few years to attempt to solve it, while you acquire stock in one of the smaller AI companies. Then give someone the fake solution, have them announce to the world that they solved your code with the help of the AI software you’ve invested in. Rise the wave, then sell it before everyone figures out the ruse.

Sounds like the NYT word game subscriptions

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