A round up for pedants:
SAS were live on TV raiding the Libiyan Embassy.
No they weren’t. They were on tv raiding the Iranian embassy (in 1980) and there was a siege at the Libyan embassy in 1984, but it didn’t end with an SAS raid. And there’s only one “i” in “Libyan”.
9999 possible PIN numbers.
I’m fairly certain you can’t have 4 consecutive numbers either so that’s another ten fewer possibilities.[/quote]
only 9999 possible PIN numbers.
10000[/quote]
No, then yes (maybe) but no, but then checked, and actually maybe yes after all:
10,000 possible combinations, going from 0000 to 9999 inclusive.
I only get a maximum of 8 possible consecutive sequences: 0123, 1234, 2345, 3456, 4567, 5678, 6789 and 7890. You can’t get a four digit consecutive sequence starting with 8 or 9. You could argue of course that 7890 isn’t one either, but I was being generous.
So that would leave 9992 possible PINs.
BUT then I thought, did the above mean “consecutive” or did they mean the same number, e.g. 0000, 1111 etc. (because there would be ten of them) so I did a quick google and, according to the Guardian, in 2012, the most popular PIN was 1234, so at least back then consecutive numbers were allowed. BUT the article then goes on “followed by 1111 and 0000” so those (at least in 2012) were also allowed.
So, it looks like Drac was right (but not about the embassy siege) and there are in fact 10,000 possible combinations, or at least there were until quite recently.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/blog/2012/sep/28/debit-cards-currentaccounts