The Growing Sport of Competitive Lockpicking

By John Farrier in Sports on Jul 30, 2010 at 7:47 pm

“Locksport” is an emerging form of competitive lockpicking. Participants strive to open locks that they’ve never seen before as quickly as they can:

Locksport fans compete in several formats, including head-to-head contests that determine the fastest lock picker. In the so-called Locksport Wizard, each contestant is given a burlap sack containing an identical set of locks and is required to blindly pick them using only tools they have put in the sack.

In other challenges, participants have to pick their way out of handcuffs before attempting to defeat a set of locks. There also are competitions to disassemble locks and reassemble them properly.

Some police officers are concerned that criminals could use these events to learn lockpicking skills, but enthusiasts say that criminals are unlikely to invest the time necessary to develop them.

Link via Make | Photo by Flickr user robertdx used under Creative Commons license

Tags: lockpick

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Romeo Vitelli
Jul 30th, 2010 at 8:08 pm
Richard Feynman was well-known for his lockpicking skills. He made it respectable (as far as science nerds were concerned).
meg
Jul 30th, 2010 at 9:26 pm
As far as I’ve heard, criminals tend to be more ham-fisted re-locks. At least typical criminals. You know, bolt cutters, ripping things apart, knocking doors in…or finding a way around it. Would be a rare and fairly sophisticated criminal who’s interested in locksport.
Splint Chesthair
Jul 31st, 2010 at 5:14 am
@meg

My dad was a locksmith when I was growing up. It doesn’t take much to open your average residential door locks with a bumpkey. It’s fairly easy. I had lots of fun in school with that one.

Anyway, as all locksmiths say, locks only keep honest people honest. Locks won’t stop a determined criminal.
linty
Jul 31st, 2010 at 7:02 am
not all locksmiths say that locks only keep honest people honest…i always found that saying a bit naive.
clinton robert labombard
Jul 31st, 2010 at 7:50 am
Competitive… lock p.. …sport of a bygone age I guess. Yeah, spear throwing, rock skipping (discus), rock throwing (shot put), weightlifting, wrasselin, running around and jumping… and lock picking.

Or you could just saw the damn thing off, or shoot it, or throw some acid on it, freeze it and wack it with a hammer… it’s kinda like the difference between throwing a spear at someone and dropping a nuke on them. The latter not being sporting and therefore not a competitive endeavor.
Splint Chesthair
Jul 31st, 2010 at 10:38 am
Well, linty, I clearly surveyed all locksmiths in the world and more than 97.5% of them said that, so I feel comfortable stating that statistically, all locksmiths say that saying. I was in no way simply conveying a common aphorism and I certainly have no idea about crimes of opportunity being an exception to that rule.
Frau
Jul 31st, 2010 at 2:35 pm
I learned how to “hack” a masterlock and a combo lock. But that only came out of necessity of not having a bolt cutter around. But after the fifth one, it became fun. Guess I could compete in the beginner category.
nutbastard
Aug 2nd, 2010 at 2:12 pm
@Frau

yeah the masterlock trick is quite handy, and easy to memorize, too.

rotate dial while pulling on shackle, it will catch on like 5 or 6 numbers. all of them will end in the same digit except for one of them. this is the last number of the combination, and all ML combos are either all odd or all even.

from there one can eliminate morepossible combos, because not only are all ML combos even or odd, they’re done in alternating sets of those numbers. this is so you can’t have the same number twice in a row in a combo. so if the last number is 27, then the second number cannot be 3, 7, 11, 15, 19, 23, or 27 etc, it will only be 1, 5, 9, 13, 17, 21, 25, 29 etc, and since the first number cannot be the same as the second, then it must be 3, 7, 11, 15, 19, 23, or 17 etc

with this the number of combos is reduced to 100 (or so?) which one can run through in about 5 minutes.

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