From: rmangaha@ucsd.edu (Agent Blue)
Newsgroups: alt.2600
Subject: My known Scantron hacks
Date: Sat, 04 Nov 1995 23:33:23 -0700

   Okay, there are so many of you high school and college kids that
desperately want to beat this little buggers.  I figure what better hack
can there be than to hack your way through education?
   Now the following info is not something I've taken from some stinkin'
text file.  This is info that I have spent months gathering through
experimentation with REAL scantron and an ACTUAL scantron machine.  And I
must say that scantron is one of the toughest things out there to hack.
   Well, now for the info you've been waiting for.  Along the left side of
most of these scantron forms, there are short black horizontal stripes. 
These tell the scanner where to scan (I think, it's just logical according
to my experiments).  Now, what you should do is make a pencil mark within
the black stripe.  I don't know how this works, but one out of every four
times you do this, it skips over the question and leaves it unmarked
therefore making you a genius in the class.  IT DOESN'T ALWAYS WORK BUT
IT'S THE MOST RELIABLE!
   Another way to hack through is by finding a shade of grey that is dark
enough to make the teacher think you really filled it in, but light enough
so that the scantron machine can't tell, therefore the machine skips over
again.  This works one out of ten times.
   Yet another thing to try is erasing the big black block.  It is one of
the strip before the #1 strip.  When you can get this to work you get a
100%.  If it doesn't you get 0%  no matter if the answers are filled in
correctly or not.  So if you are a gambling person, go ahead.
   I've also found that cutting out the big block mentioned above works
much more often than erasing it, but you leave evidence that is too
visible.  I do not recommend either of those above two.
   And still there is another hack.  What you need to do for this one is
make crosshatches in the bubbles.  This is almost impossible to get
working, but the pattterns I've found to work best are diagnals crossing
and just horizontals.
   That is all the hacks that I know are possible.  I would like to point
out that CHAPSTICK DOES NOT WORK.  There may have been a time that it did,
but it doesn't now.  Perhaps it would if you get a really thin coating
that will actually reflect the light, maybe...but I have never gotten it
to work.
   If anybody out there finds this useful, please send me an e-mail.  I
just want to get an idea of where my work has gone.  I want something that
I can see.  That's all.  Now go out and cheat yourself out of an
education!

-- 
Uh...I still need to work on making a cool picture dammit!