Braingle: 'The Combination Lock' Brain Teaser

The Combination Lock

Mystery teasers are little stories where you need to figure out what happened based on the given clues.

Puzzle ID:	#47463
Fun:	(2.85)
Difficulty:	(2.93)
Category:	Mystery
Submitted By:	RomanG417
Corrected By:	Dave

After Andrew had been sick for a week, he asked his best friend Jesse to get his books out of his locker. Instead of telling Jesse the three number combination Andrew said he kept a small piece of paper with the combination under his locker door.

After school Jesse went to Andrew's locker and pulled the paper. On the paper was written:
24 24 22 9 9 9 9 22 24 22 9 9.

Thinking this would be easy but a little tedious, Jesse entered in every arrangement of 24, 22, and 9 there was without the lock opening. Realizing there was something behind these numbers that he wasn't noticing, Jesse sat down for a few minutes to think it out. After ten minutes of intense thinking, Jesse went to the locker, entered the combination into the lock and it opened.

What was the combination?

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Comments

jordy56 Jul 11, 2010	cool first comment. it took me a while but i figured it out . nice teaser RomanG417
racoonieboy Jul 12, 2010	Nice.
BeanSC Jul 14, 2010	Good one.
asamasam Jul 17, 2010	Wow. Got me there.
Wendifly Jul 26, 2010	I was stumped! Great puzzle. I loved trying to solve it. Even after the hint, I had no clue how to solve it. I tried all sorts of adding and dividing numbers.. Keep up good work, RomanG417!
suchageek Jul 31, 2010	Really, really tough. Good one
WowItsJustRob Aug 04, 2010	Hm. I don't know... I had the right method, but this one still stumped me in the end. I translated the numbers to the Roman Numerals, and then to the a possible combination, and ended up with 221. So I thought it would'v been 2, 2, 1. Wasn't too sure since I didn't see any helpful spacing in the numbers. Either way, pretty fun puzzle.
EmilyAnne Aug 11, 2010	awesome! i got it pretty quickly but i really enjoyed it
VitalStatistic Aug 11, 2010	Wow. Great teaser. I missed that one. I figured the numbers represented letters, but then I started with the double X and noticed there were four 9's in a row, and gave up, thinking it wouldn't be able to spell a word. It might have helped to have a little more detail about the lock, like that it has three digits in the combination, or something along those lines.
bradon182001 Aug 11, 2010	Well done, thanks for posting.
kwelchans Aug 11, 2010	If I were doing my friend a favor by getting his books for him, he better bloody well tell me the locker combination rather than make me go through trying to solve it from his silly clues. Good teaser though.
patiencewithaP Aug 11, 2010	Ouch...this one hurt my brain. Well written...even though I didn't get it!
auntiesis Aug 11, 2010	Tough, tough, tough. The old brain just didn't get into gear, even with the hint. Very clever, but also tricky.
tonjawithaj Aug 11, 2010	Clever! I like it!
trewq Aug 11, 2010	unique! i didn't connect the dots but it was really cool
squeakQT Aug 11, 2010	that was a great one, it was really fun but i had absolutley no idea what the answer was though i think that maybe u should have said what type of lock it was, u know like if it was a three number combo or four or as many as u want combo. also, what kind of friend is Andrew anyhow?! Jesse was doing him a favor and andrew gives him some headache making riddle to solve! definatley not any friend i would wanna have
builder Aug 11, 2010	Good job, I didn't get it without the hint, then it was easy
precious1026 Aug 28, 2010	I enjoyed this Teaser, but the Roman Numerals was a bit much. It would have been easier to just add the numbers. hard harder hardest.
scallio Sep 20, 2010	Thank goodness I'm not Andrew's friend. For putting me through all that needlessly, I'd have beaten him over the head with his books once I met up with him!
Camillee Oct 03, 2010	kinna tough but pretty good job!!
summer868 Jan 05, 2011	If it were up to me Andrew would have gone another week without his books
Jeppydog Mar 21, 2011	I figured it out but still got the wrong answer... Great puzzle.
Darkmagician92 Apr 09, 2011	nice one, i figured it was roman numerals but dint get which combination of the numerals r to be taken
BookwormAnG Jun 07, 2011	wow... complicated
Rileyd Feb 24, 2013	VERY COMPLEX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Candi7 Mar 21, 2013	i would kill andrew