Assuming you were a teenager in perhaps the eighties, you would at least be aware of Rubik's Cube, and all the derivatives that followed.
A small fraction of my peers actually spent the time and effort needed to solve the cube. Not me though.
A shibboleth, both honouring and granting exclusive access to those who misspent their teenage years in that particular way.
A mechanical lock, of 3 x 3 x 3 rotatable colour-coded cubic sections, in place of a standard doorknob, thus requiring patience, concentration and determination to open.
Not ideal for fire doors.-- Frankx, Sep 29 2021 Similar... https://xkcd.com/457/Is there anything Mr Munroe hasn't already covered..? [neutrinos_shadow, Sep 29 2021] Found your door handle. https://ar.pinteres...363032419939411255/ [2 fries shy of a happy meal, Sep 29 2021] A more likely door handle https://www.google....HBF_en-GBGB919GB919 [Skewed, Sep 30 2021] Rubiks Lock [xaviergisz, Oct 02 2021] mountweazel_20dictionary [hippo, Oct 02 2021] Is this going to be a security feature to exclude stupid people from entry?
[Reads idea]
Hmm.. this is going to be fun.
[Spins Rubik lock to mix it up]
[Picks little coloured plastic colour slips off]
[Reattaches them in different places]
There, that should do it.
[Satisfied snigger]-- Skewed, Sep 29 2021 Ah yes, it would do that. I myself would thusly be excluded.-- Frankx, Sep 29 2021 //Not ideal for fire doors//
So it's about eugenics then? :)-- Skewed, Sep 29 2021 When Rubiks' Cube came out Dad brought us back the instructions from the US someone had figured out, so we got a bit of a cheat head start on everyone at school for it.
Surprisingly simple, only something like three or four moves you need to remember, though you do need to repeat them a lot, so it may not be the difficult thing you want.-- Skewed, Sep 29 2021 [2 fries] Something like the Rubik style Babylon tower <link> is probably more appropriate than your link.-- Skewed, Sep 30 2021 Shirley that would make a better door bell.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Sep 30 2021 Well the problem with your one is you only need to be able to recognise colours & you can solve it more or less instantly, wouldn't even keep out the colour blind, trial & error should get the answer pretty quickly as well, so I thought something a bit more 'complex' might be in order.. anyhoo, it's not got a clapper so it can't be a bell.-- Skewed, Sep 30 2021 A bun, for the proper usage of the word "shibboleth".-- Voice, Oct 02 2021 //it's not got a clapper so it can't be a bell// This raises worryingly shibbolethic questions. When considering a bell and its clapper, these are clearly two objects, even if they are interlocked or attached to one another. If the clapper falls out and is eaten by a passing bear, does the bell stop being a bell? (in the same way that a car stops being a car if its wheels are replaced by stacks of bricks?) But many bells don't have an attached internal clapper, being struck externally by a hammer or striker. The hammer can be attached to a frame as with clock bells or doorbells, but can also be hand-held and thus carried around. A set of bells can share a single hammer. Even if you define the word "clapper" to encompass hand-held strikers and mounted hammers, (which I think is a bit louche to be honest) you then have the problem of the hand-held striker being slipped into the pocket of the bell-tinger and taken home and borrowed by their children to use for stirring porridge (thus transforming it into a spurtle). I dispute that the existence of a spurtle in a different building from a clapper-less bell has the power to stop the bell being a bell. And even if it did, at what moment would the bell stop being a bell? Would the transformation of the striker into a spurtle propagate at the speed of light? We should set up long distance experiments to test this phenomenon.-- pocmloc, Oct 02 2021 //does the bell stop being a bell?//
If it's not got a clapper it's really just an odd shaped tuning fork isn't it, one without tines, hang on, what do you call a fork without tines? an odd shaped tuning spoon?
You hear people call it a bell (what we have here is two things with the same name so yes it stops being a bell & becomes.. a bell, which is confusing & can lead to misplaced essays on the nature of reality & 'when is a bell not a bell' employing completely unnecessary words like shibboleth) you'll hear others call that bit the bowl.
//shibboleth// clearly this word is part of some conspiracy to boost dictionary sales.
[Idly wonders how many words bored dictionary authors just slip in for the hell of it]-- Skewed, Oct 02 2021 Thanks [Voice], //proper usage of the word "shibboleth"//
…but can I pronounce it correctly?-- Frankx, Oct 02 2021 [Skewed (idly wondering)] see link-- hippo, Oct 02 2021 [Sees link]
I'd not heard the phrase mountweasel before, have a bun for that one :)
[Googles]
From Wikipedia "According to the encyclopedia's editor, it is a tradition for encyclopedias to put a fake entry to trap competitors for plagiarism"
One now wonders how often that excuse gets used to cover for straightforward cockups & if the whole idea might not have arisen when an editor hastily came up with it having just been challenged on an egregiously inaccurate entry.-- Skewed, Oct 02 2021 random, halfbakery