A N A TTEMPT TO D ECRYPT PAGES 269–271 OF J ONATHAN S AFRAN F OER ’ S Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close APREPRINT Yannis Haralambous Département Informatique IMT Atlantique CS 83818 29238 Brest Cedex 3 yannis.haralambous@imt-atlantique.fr November 16, 2020 ABSTRACT In this paper we attempt to decrypt the sequence of digits given by Jonathan Safran Foer in his novel Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. We create directed acyclic graphs that a human can follow to find potential solutions. Representations of these graphs are displayed in this paper. The Python code used to produce them is also provided, in the appendix. Keywords Foer, extremely loud, digits, decrypting. This paper contains supplementary material to [1]. The PDF files of graphs described in this paper, at full size, can be downloaded here: https://www.imt-atlantique.fr/sites/default/files/users/user1063/ foer-graphs.pdf and here: https://www.imt-atlantique.fr/sites/default/files/users/user1063/ foer-graphs2.pdf 1 Introduction In Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close [2, p. 269–271], Oskar’s grand-father calls his grand-mother on the phone, but, being mute, has no other solution than using the ISO/IEC 9995-8 [3] mapping of letters on telephone keypads to match letters of his message into digits, and then pushing the corresponding keys so that the dual-tone multi-frequency signals are played. Foer provides the digits (the sounds of chiwh would have been perceived by Oskar’s grand-mother, assuming she has the perfect pitch): 6, 9, 6, 2, 6, 3, 4, 7, 3, 5, 4, 3, 2, 5, 8, 6, 2, 6, 3, 4, 5, 8, 7, 8, 2, 7, 7, 4, 8, 3, 3, 2, 8, 8, 4, 3, 2, 4, 7, 7, 6, 7, 8, 4, 6, 3, 3, 3, 8, 6, 3, 4, 6, 3, 6, 7, 3, 4, 6, 5, 3, 5, 7! 6, 4, 3, 2, 2, 6, 7, 4, 2, 5, 6, 3, 8, 7, 2, 6, 3, 4, 3? 5, 7, 6, 3, 5, 8, 6, 2, 6, 3, 4, 5, 8, 7, 8, 2, 7, 7, 4, 8, 3, 9, 2, 8, 8, 4, 3, 2, 4, 7, 7, 6, 7, 8, 4, 6, 3, 3, 3, 8! 4, 3, 2, 4, 7, 7, 6, 7, 8, 4! 6, 3, 3, 3, 8, 6, 3, 9, 6, 3, 6, 6, 3, 4, 6, 5, 3, 5, 7! 6, 4, 3, 2, 2, 6, 7, 4, 2, 5, 6, 3, 8, 7, 2, 6, 3, 4, 3? 5, 7, 6, 3, 5, 8, 6, 2, 6, 3, 4, 5, 8, 7, 8, 2, 7, 7, 4, 8, 3, 3, 2, 8! 7, 7, 4, 8, 3, 3, 2, 8, 3, 4, 3, 2, 4, 7, 6, 6, 7, 8, 4, 6, 8, 3, 8, 8, 6, 3, 4, 6, 3, 6, 7, 3, 4, 6, 7, 7, 4, 8, 3, 3, 9, 8, 8, 4, 3, 2, 4, 5, 7, 6, 7, 8, 4, 6, 3, 5, 5, 2, 6, 9, 4, 6, 5, 6, 7, 5, 4, 6! (. . . another 2,317 digits) together with punctuation marks indicating sentence boundaries. The text contains 129 sentences, 92 of which end with an exclamation mark and the rest by a question mark. (It is not clear how the punctuation marks are transmitted through the phone.) Mapping letters to digits according to ISO/IEC 9995-8 is a lossy operation since to each digit correspond 3 or 4 letters. On page 269, Foer gives some examples that can be elucidated without much effort (our solutions given in brackets): I pressed 4, 3, 5,˘ a5, 6," [HELLO] she said, Hello?" I asked, 4, 7, 4, 8, 7, 3, 2, 5, 5, 9, 9, 6, 8?" [ISITREALLYYOU] She said, Your phone isn’t one hundred dollars. Hello?" I wanted to reach my