There are possibly millions of mini games, riddles, quizzes and other sorts of time killers available on the Internet. Many years ago I came across such an online riddle and it was called Notpron and I encountered an incredible depth of complexity while progressing through its stages. Never again have I found a game, that required so much witts and thinking like Notpron.
Notpron was created in 2004 by German game designer David Münnich and has been translated into English and Chinese ever since. In all those years the game was visited by more than 17.5M people, trying to solve all the 140 levels of the riddle and out of those only 36 have truly succeeded at it, that means only 0.0001% got to see the end of it.
Rightfully so, it claims to be the hardest riddle on the internet and that’s very likely to be correct.
The game is designed in a very simple and sleek way similar to how the Internet just looked back in the day. In order to solve it, you don’t need to be a computer scientist but you will definitely need to do some research and investigate in order to progress through the riddle.
Finally got to Minus 36 in Notpron.
My head hurts now.
How far can you get? https://t.co/exVSPZsJ7H pic.twitter.com/ITF2419aoz— Will Burns (@darianknight) April 15, 2016
There is a variety of skills you need to tap into, in order to really solve the riddle completely. Mouse clicking will only get you past the first challenge. After that you need to follow the hints provided to you and you’ll need to think about the challenges really hard. I wouldn’t say experiences in coding, audio editing, graphic design and music theory is a requirement but if you know a little about them, it will certainly help you with the challenges.
Make sure to visit the Notpron website, but if you are passionate about this kind of thing, brace for investing many hours and days into this. It’s a very tense experience and every time you pass a level, you’ll feel like you just passed an exam. If I was an HR recruiter or in the industry of talent acquisition, the certificate of passing all levels of Notpron would be at the top of the papers to impress me.
Check out Notpron and have fun with it. If you enjoyed playing it, feel free to drop a line into the comments below, letting us know which level you reached. Good luck!
Photo credit: Axel Hartmann
Source: Stephen Tweedie (Business Insider) / Clinton Nguyen (Vice)
