TechnoDolt™ tip — Searching by numbers

The other day I needed to find an article I'd read in the previous day's New York Times.

For a change I'd gathered the days-old heaps of newspapers from their various rallying stations around my house (the treadmill stop appears above and below) and stuffed them into a giant Hefty bag and thrown them out back in the trash.

The story I needed was among that mass.

I had no interest in pawing through my garbage — especially on a 27°F evening — to locate the piece.

So that left the internet.

Which became a problem since I couldn't remember any distinguishing words from the story nor its author, though the content was crystal clear in my mind.

I tried all manner of words that might've been in the article but nothing came back via the Times' search function.

Then I had an idea: for some reason the number "200,000" stuck in my mind as having appeared in the story.

So I put "200,000" into the search box and asked for articles in the past seven days: Bingo — there was the one I wanted, among 26 in the past week which had employed that same number.

Very cool.

Like I always say, "Even a blind, anosmic pig finds an acorn every now and then."