Riddle
1. British Zoologist Professor Richard Dawkins
2. The International Space Station
3. Martha Stewart
4. A/S Regnecentralen (A Danish computer manufacturer that I worked for in the seventies)
5. Robert Metcalfe (co-inventor of Ethernet and founder of 3COM corporation)
6. Hungary
7. The Princeton institute for Advanced Studies: Theoretical Physics
8. Seattle Symphony
9. Georgetown, Cayman Islands
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I’m looking for the common factor … If you know it, email me at paul@paulclaessen.com (subject: blog riddle) and, if correct, I will acknowledge that fact here:
(and I DID leave a clue in this post)
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Correct answers sofar, from:
– Paul Claessen (Duh!)
– Victor de Keijzer Himself (3rd attempt)
– Dawnell Claessen
– Rob Lagesse (with a little help from Jay Leno ;-))
–
Honorary Laureates (people who weren’t completely correct, but made a much appreciated and original attempt):
– Victor de Keijzer (Yes, THE Victor the Keijzer *proud look*, the world famous Dutch author from www.victordekeijzer.nl who, incidently, has a sister who once worked for A/S Regnecentralen as well -such a small world-)
–
People whom I fully expect to solve this:
– Dawnell ClaessenÂ
– Bob “Injun” Cuyt
– Charles Simonyi
– Peter Westergaard
– Victor de Keijzer (on 2nd 3rd attempt)
– Rob Lagesse
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The solution:
The common factor is a person.
He was born in Budapest, Hungary (hint #6) on September 10, 1948
In 1966 he started to work for the Danish computer manufacturer A/S Regnecentralen (hint #4),helping them with the development of their Algol compiler.
He moved to the US and, after getting degrees in Mathematics and Statistics, he started to work for Xerox, where he worked together with Robert Metcalfe (hint #5) who urged him to go work for Bill Gates and Microsoft, where he lead the development of MS Word and Excel.
For programmers: he’s also the guy who ‘invented’ “Hungarian Notation”.
Thanks to joining the right company at the right time, he became a biljonaire and philanthropist: he made substantial donations to the Seattle Symphony (hint #8), the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies (hint #7) and he establised the “chair” for Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, a position held by Professor Richard Dawkins (hint #1).
He is the owner of a huge yacht, named ‘Skat’, Georgetown, Cayman Islands is its home port (hint #9).
He is currently dating Martha Stewart (hint #3) and is in training to become the next ‘Space Tourist’ to visit the International Space Station (hint #2).
The picture in the post is of the aft deck of his yacht Skat.
A simpler clue was his name in my list of people whom I expected to be able to solve the puzzle.
His name is Charles Simonyi.
Ahh, and here I thought it was about red chairs in a sunny room. *sigh* I guess I am not technical?!? 😉
@deannie: I’m SURE you’re technical. And if only you had thought of it you would have googled: dawkins martha stewart space station
.. and been REAL close to the answer.