Sankore
Anand Sarwate
The numbers correspond to MIT Thesis call numbers. Well, not exactly call numbers, but MIT numbers theses by year, so 97-417 refers to 1997, Thesis 417. These theses are all available online here. They are:
| H. | Aoyama | Applications of catastrophe theory in management | 1985-57 |
| Q. | Bui | Containerless processing of stainless steel | 1998-348 |
| C. | Shadle | The acoustics of fricative consonants | 1985-23 |
| A. | Tachmindji | Calculation of cavitating propeller characteristics | 1951-9 |
| L. | Randall | Power factor correction | 1921-1 |
| L. | Attai | Simulation to access exterior enclosure innovations | 1997-417 |
| F. | Came | An application of work simplification to the tanning industry | 1941-3 |
| O. | Taylor | In-situ reduction of hexavalent chromium by electroremediation with ferrous iron | 1997-318 |
| R. | Scott | Numerical analysis of consolidation problems | 1953-18 |
Reading down the first names gives "HQ CALL FOR" and the last names spell "ABSTRACTS." They call HQ for ABSTRACTS, and are sent this file, which is a call for papers for a conference on Chaos, Quantum Computing, and Children's Literature.
They have to write a 200 word abstract and schedule a presentation, at which point we ridicule them, write the answer on the back of the abstract, shred it, and return it to them. Reassembling the shredded abstract reveals the answer, VOLUBLE.