Answer: Binary Secret #141

The secret message is:

SWIM

The decoded message: SWIM
Every row decoded.

Row by row

RowBulbsAdd the ‘on’ numbersCharacter
11001116 + 2 + 1 = 19S
21011116 + 4 + 2 + 1 = 23W
3010018 + 1 = 9I
4011018 + 4 + 1 = 13M

Crack it with Python

Python can do the adding for you. int(code, 2) reads a string of 1s and 0s as a binary number. Then the program finds that letter in the alphabet. It takes away 1 because Python counts the letters from 0.

secret = [
    "10011",
    "10111",
    "01001",
    "01101",
]
letters = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ"
message = ""
for code in secret:
    number = int(code, 2)
    message = message + letters[number - 1]
print(message)

When you run it, it prints:

SWIM

<strong>Beep says:</strong> Want to write your own secret message? Turn it around: ord() turns a character into its number, and format(number, “08b”) writes the number as 8 binary digits. Beep boop!