Sixty Million Trillion Combinations is a mystery short story by Isaac Asimov.
Part of the Black Widowers series, it was first published in the 5 May 1980 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. It was later collected in 1984's Banquets of the Black Widowers.
Summary[]
Thomas Trumbull is the host for the monthly Black Widowers banquet and arrives early, having forgone a guest because he himself is the source of the evening's problem. He explains his dilemma to the club. A brilliant but emotionally fragile mathematician named Vladimir Pochik, vital to a government project, has stopped working. Pochik accuses a colleague, Sandino, of stealing his solution to a mathematical lemma related to the famous unproven Goldbach's Conjecture.
Pochik claims Sandino could only have accessed his work on the computer by knowing his unique fourteen-letter code word, which Pochik insists was impossible to guess, having never been written down and possessing "millions of trillions" of combinations. Without proof of theft, Trumbull cannot force Sandino to relinquish credit, and Pochik remains on strike. Trumbull's challenge is to deduce the code word to demonstrate to Pochik how Sandino could have discovered it.
The Black Widowers discuss possibilities; the code could be a name, a phrase from poetry, or a random sequence. Roger Halsted calculates that a truly random fourteen-letter combination offers about sixty-four million trillion possibilities, making a brute-force approach impossible. They conclude the word must appear random but be easily memorable for Pochik. The waiter Henry intervenes and suggests a specific sequence of letters: WEALTMDITEBIAT.
Trumbull calls Pochik and recites the letters. Pochik's reaction confirms this is the correct code. Henry explains his reasoning; a fourteen-letter sequence corresponds to the fourteen lines of a sonnet. Considering Pochik's former profession as a waiter and his taste in poetry, Henry deduced the code was formed from the first letters of each line of John Milton's sonnet "On His Blindness," which concludes with the resonant line, "They also serve who only stand and wait," held particular resonance for anyone who had worked in service.
Characters[]
Black Widowers[]
- Thomas Trumbull (host)
- Geoffrey Avalon
- Mario Gonzalo
- Emmanuel Rubin
- James Drake
- Roger Halsted
- Henry (the waiter)
Others[]
- Vladimir Pochik
- Sandino
- Christian Goldbach
Historical Figures Mentioned[]
- Nebuchadnezzar (Babylonian king)
- William Wordsworth
- John Milton
- Shakespeare
- Albert Einstein
- Sir Isaac Newton
Fictional Figures Mentioned[]
- The Chaldean wise men (from the Book of Daniel)
- Daniel (Biblical figure)