The Solution

Of all the posts I've written for this blog, the most popular with Google is a little thing I did about the mystery numbers for the American TV show Lost, back in March.

4 8 15 16 23 42

So much for literary criticism, South Asian literature, Bollywood, Bhangra, or the politics of multiculturalism. Apparently more people would rather read about TV.

Not that I'm complaining too loudly. Successive waves of web-surfers come to visit every Wednesday night and Thursday after the show airs, trying (I suppose) to see if anyone has cracked the code. Last Thursday, the spike was about 500 additional visitors (and that's on top of the 100-200 people who visit the site looking for those numbers every single day).

Lost stubbornly refuses to reveal the meaning of the six numbers on the hatch, or how they might be connected to "Hurley's" lottery experience, or the mysterious radio beacon, or the "Others," or the evil black smoke, or the "Black Rock," or virtually anything at all on the island (ad infinitum). Last night, though much was promised, nothing much was delivered: the crazy "Desmond" simply showed us that the numbers add up to 108 on his computer -- woohoo.

Many people have commented on my Lost post over the past few months, but today I think someone might actually have solved it (or at least one aspect of it), with a creative longtitude/latitude reading: 4.815 X 162.342. It points to a spot in the middle of the open ocean near Papua New Guinea (see the Mapquest location here.

Now, as to why those particular numbers have a magical quality associated with them, who knows? The same could be asked about the French chick, or the crazy guy holed up in an underground quarantine for 15 years, listening to the same Mama Cass record again and again ("Make Your Own Kind Of Music").

Can Lost offer a coherent explanation that will satisfy the 20 million or so people who have been waiting for one for more than a year? I doubt it, but I have to admit I'm enjoying being teased thus far.