Tired but exhilarated, you arrive at the final scheduled hop of the day: San Francisco. It feels good to be approaching the end of your journey, but you know there are still pitfalls for the unwary.
Sure enough, no sooner have you stepped outside than you’re surrounded by a posse of sneering start-up bros.
“HOPR? Never heard of it! Is it like TOR?”
“Well not exactly,” you respond meekly, “it has routes and tickets and tokens and…”
“Pff. TOR is so last-gen. There’s a hot new service in town. Totally disrupting the paradigm, revolutionizing the transport layer. How? Well the O is a T now for one thing. And it’s got all that HOPR stuff and more. It’s the only way to send things. Of course you wouldn’t have heard of it. It’s a U.S. special…”
Before you can respond, they continue to bray about their earnings from whatever they’re talking about.
“I sent something from here to Atlanta and earned 17.”
“Yeah? I sent something from LA to New Orleans via Chicago and earned 23”
“Well I sent something from Little Rock to Houston via Winnipeg and earned the same”
“Pff. For a one-city hop that’s rubbish. I earned 43 on mine. You’ll never guess how.”
You don’t know what they’re talking about, but you’re sure it’s standard Silicon Valley bull: taking something old-fashioned and pretending it’s new.
Still, you can’t deny you’re intrigued. All this hype is infectious. How would you earn 43? (The answer is a three city route: From [A] to [B] via [C])
Shipment between the two countries is possible. For example, between the United States and Canada. Or from Brazil to the United States (possibly vice versa).
I’m glad there’s finally a puzzle that’s lasted for more than 10 minutes! No-one has the correct answer yet, and most of these aren’t even valid routes.
For anyone who’s worked out what’s going on, I should maybe clarify that this is based on the original. (I didn’t realize there was an update which maybe breaks some of these numbers - I can’t find any information on it. Information on the original is easy to find.)
