Computer programmers are being challenged to write the world’s sneakiest and most confusing code in a competition that opens next week. To win, entrants must find ways to write programs in the C ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Imagine that someone gives you a list of five numbers: 1, 6, 21, 107, and—wait for it—47,176,870. Can you guess what comes next? If ...