Paper strips

Paper strips refers to pieces of paper that needed to break the code of A Big Door:

• a creased paper strip
• a crinkled paper strip
• a crumpled paper strip
• a folded paper strip
• a ragged paper strip
• a ripped paper strip
• a rumpled paper strip
• a torn paper strip

Possible Words

• ABRA
• ALA
• BAR
• BAZ
• BLAG
• BOB
• CAD
• CAT
• CTHON
• DORN
• FNORD
• FOO
• GOLD
• GORT
• GUG
• KAZAM
• KOF
• MEEP
• MOO
• PLIB
• PLONK
• POON
• PSHOO
• PYEW
• TANG
• THWAIT
• THWART
• ZZZZ

Possible Edges

The following tears can be found on the right side of the pieces of paper; the left sides are simply the complements of what you see here.

A careful tear:	A zig-zaggy tear:	A rough tear:	A wibbly tear:
A jagged tear:	A curved tear:	A funny tear:	A dangly tear:
A sinusoidal tear:	A fuzzy tear:

Notes

• The 8 strips can be assembled together by matching the edges of the images, in order to reveal the password to A Big Door.
• The "straight" edges (i.e. careful tears) aren't necessarily the beginning and end of the strip. However, the beginning and end are easy enough to identify, as they are located where two edges have no matching partners.
• Since there are 28 possible words that can be found in the password (assuming that there are no repeats), there are 125,318,793,600 (28! / 20!, or 28*27*26*25*24*23*22*21) possible password combinations. If repeats are allowed, then there are 377,801,998,336 possible password combinations. Even if you have 7 of the 8 strips of paper, you will still have 21 or 28 possible choices for one of two spots, which produces 42 or 56 options that you will have to try. Therefore, random guessing is not very feasible when you are dealing with paper strips.

References

• Bobcat Goldthwait is an actor, best known for playing Zed in the Police Academy films.
• Fnord is an oft-used reference to The Illuminatus! Trilogy, written by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, and Principia Discordia, written by Malaclypse the Younger and Kerry Wendell Thornley.
• George DORN is a character in The Illuminatus! Trilogy.
• POON and POON-TANG are slang terms for female genitalia.
• Tang is a fruit-flavored drink that used to be associated with the U.S. manned spaceflight program.
• FOO, BAR, and BAZ are standard metasyntactic variables.
• BLAG is a another word for a blog, as defined by xkcd.
• ABRA and CAD are parts of the incantation word abracadabra. Similarly, ALA and KAZAM can be combined to form alakazam, another incantation word.

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