Sixty Million Trillion Combinations

Sixty Million Trillion Combinations is a short mystery story written by Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the May 5, 1980, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and reprinted in Banquets of the Black Widowers (1984) and The Return of the Black Widowers (2003). Asimov originally entitled it "Fourteen Letters," but the magazine's title was kept in subsequent uses of the story. The story is one of a collection of short mysteries whose characters are based loosely upon the Trap Door Spiders, a stag-club of which Asimov was a member.

Each month, the seven men who comprise the Black Widowers (six who dine, and the waiter who attends them) meet at a fine restaurant and converse over dinner with each other, their guest, and their waiter, Henry. The host of the group — that is, the member who pays for everyone else's dinner that month — usually brings a guest for the evening, who will then be "grilled," or questioned, when dessert has been finished and supper has reached the brandy stage. This occasion is different, for Thomas Trumbull, one of the members, wants to present to the others a problem that he faces at work.

Trumbull works for the U.S. government in a mysterious capacity; it is known, though, that he is involved in cryptanalysis.

As usual, the Black Widowers have discussed, during the pre-supper cocktails, a matter that will appear important later: the apparently unimportant subject of alliteration, or, to be more precise, first letters.

Trumbull explains that his department is concerned with the important computations and, subsequently, with the paranoia of a mathematician, Vladimir Pochik, who suspects that his work on Goldbach's conjecture has been stolen. Trumbull also confesses that he feels rather as though he is in the position of the Chaldean wise men facing Nebuchadnezzar II. By this, he means that, instead of solving a known cryptogram, he must figure out what the cryptogram is.

Pochik, a former restaurant waiter (like Henry), had proven to be a brilliant mathematician. He had been happily working with the authorities until another mathematician, Sandino, became his rival, and an insulting, harassing rival at that - always teasing Pochik about having started work as a waiter, for instance. To Pochik's vast dismay, Sandino publishes an article showing the same work that Pochik had made, and Pochik is certain that Sandino stole the work.

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