Please contact the bank to receive your card back

February 25, 2008 7:25 PM

Help me remember my bank card pin. First clue, it did not have any of the following numbers in it: 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9.

My pin had 2, 1, 0, 7. There were no digits which I had to press twice in a row. I have a very good aptitude for patterns and there was no clear pattern either in the number or in the way my hand moved across the keypad. I.e, no diagonal or chess move or anything like that. Also, I certainly pressed either 2 and 0 or 0 and 2 using my middle finger and my thumb. I only used two fingers for this pin. It almost certainly started with a 2, most certainly not a 0, 7 or 1. I believe that 2 was in the number more than once, but I could be mistaken. What are the possible combinations using those clues? I only have 3 tries before my card gets absorbed by the machine.

posted by markesh to work & money (8 comments total)

Isn't this the kind of thing your bank can help you with? Like resetting the PIN?
posted by stew560 at 7:27 PM on February 25 [1 favorite]

It's 2712.
posted by danb at 7:27 PM on February 25 [1 favorite]

My Bank can't help me because I'm traveling outside the country. 2712 sounds close, but there was a 0 in my pin. 27 sounds right somehow...
posted by markesh at 7:30 PM on February 25

Quite likely, you have only three tries per SESSION, so you can try twice, then cancel, remove card, try twice again... none of the bank machines I've seen have session-to-session memory.

Of course, you are traveling and may have some fancy odd machinery, so don't count on that.
posted by rokusan at 7:33 PM on February 25

2027
posted by iconomy at 7:34 PM on February 25

First, how can you have 2,1,0,7 and have potentially hit the 2 twice? Assuming it's a 4-digit pin, of course.

However, assuming you're wrong about hitting 2 twice, since you have a head for patterns AND used your middle finger and thumb exclusively, and since you think you started with 2, odds are it's 2071. 2017 is an easy rocking pattern, but 2071 is awkward.
posted by davejay at 7:36 PM on February 25

Well I mean, if we take 27 as a given and assume that 0 and 2 touch each other and that 2 is used once or twice and the other numbers are used one or zero times, then we have the following possible combinations:

1027
2027
2702

Good luck. Make sure my work is correct.
posted by Electrius at 7:36 PM on February 25

2027 is not right because it has a pattern in it. If I had seen 2027 on a piece of paper I would have thought of a year, and I never thought of that when I read the pin.
posted by markesh at 7:37 PM on February 25