SCP-551 - Impossible Puzzle

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"SCP-551" by diogenes, from the SCP Wiki. Source: https://scpwiki.com/scp-551. Licensed under CC-BY-SA.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
This is data's specialist Sanders of the Data Redundancy Project.
SCP five to fifty one object class is safe special
containment procedures. SCP five fifty one is to be contained
in a simple cardboard box and must be of inadequate
size to carry all pieces of SCP five fifty one.
The box should be stored in a locker unit on

(00:25):
storage site twenty three. At least one level one staff
member is to be notified in the event of its removal.
Description SEP five fifty one is a standard five hundred
fifty piece jigsaw puzzle which should depict, in its finished form,
the image of a solitary woman on a small rowboat
surrounded by a stormy seat. However, due to the nature

(00:46):
of SCP five fifty one's anomalous qualities, some details of
the scene are left incomplete, such as the woman's face
and data expunged. SCP five to fifty one was found
in the apartment of redacted after other residents complained of
an odour seeping out from under the door. The severely
malnourished body of the resident was discovered beside SP five

(01:07):
fifty one, with several pieces still clutched in her hand.
Roughly one third of SCP five fifty one was pieced
together on her floor. Multiple subjects testing sep. Five fifty
one state that a completion of the puzzle seems inconceivable.
The mental reactions of subjects to Sep. Five fifty one
was diverse, apparently depending less on the puzzle and more
on the personality of the subject see adend of five

(01:29):
fifty one, Dash one two three, though the effects of
sp five fifty one on the psychology of subjects should
not be overlooked. Adendum five fifty one Dash one Standard
class D personnel is tasked with piecing together SCP five
fifty one. Subjects spent two weeks in a single room
trying to finish the puzzle and pausing only to sleep.
Subject became increasingly frustrated with his progress on SAP five

(01:53):
fifty one, which failed to span past forty connected pieces.
After this time, subject slept less during his last day's
working on the puzzle and was permitted to stop when
he data expunged. Adendum five fifty one Dash two. Class
D personnel with a history of addictive behavior is tasked
with piecing together Sep. Five fifty one. Subject acted aloof

(02:15):
about the assignment at first, but after connecting two pieces,
she seemed to become alarmingly obsessed with SAP five fifty one.
Subject stayed beside it for days, sometimes screaming about her
lack of progress. After a period of four weeks, subject
lost consciousness from lack of sleep, and the test was
ended one hundred and two pieces of SCP five to

(02:35):
fifty one had been connected. Adendum five fifty one Dash three.
Doctor redacted, who scored above average on a standard IQ test,
expressed skepticism about SCP five fifty one and was approved
to test it. The doctor completed all but a couple sections,
specifically the woman's facial features, and data expunged. Despite this success,

(02:57):
the doctor showed confusion over his remaining pieces and adopted
a fatalist attitude toward the puzzle, finally refusing to complete
it after four days. A DTUM five fifty one DASH four,
A computer based approach was taken on the completion of
the puzzle. The first tool used was a mechanical arm
designed to take a piece and place it in the puzzle,
used along with a camera and a desktop computer running

(03:20):
an image processing algorithm. The application was tested extensively with
normal puzzles. However, when tasked with completion of the puzzle,
it would invariably trigger a blue screen or a kernel
panic as soon as it finished scanning the piece. An
embedded design approach was taken and the computer was replaced
by a microcontroller in charge of moving the piece, linked

(03:41):
to an image processing DSP. However, the value of the
program counter register in all the CPUs would corrupt as
soon as the DSP finished scanning the picture of the piece,
and in several occasions a sudden unexpected current peak would
result in damage to the CPUs and other components. Automated
solutions therefore had to be discarded. You can get all

(04:07):
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