If anyone is wondering, everywhere the guide mentions "sheer force" and "sheer line", that should be "shear force" and "shear line". It's like "wind shear".
"Sheer" doesn't even make any sense in this context: "sheer force" would be twisting the tumbler so hard you break all the pins, and that would not exactly be considered "lock picking"!
What's interesting to me is how pervasive this misspelling has become. A Google search for "lock picking sheer force" finds 17,500,000 matches, but "lock picking shear force" finds only 205,000. I wonder if all these misspellings originated from this MIT guide, or if there was something else before that?
> "sheer force" would be twisting the tumbler so hard you break all the pins
That's not how I read it... The best gloss of "sheer" in this context would be "pure", which would mean something like "force, devoid of any other tool or method". Like, "I moved the rock with sheer force" would imply I just pushed it and didn't use a lever or anything.
(You are correct that it's the wrong word choice, of course; the above is not what the author is meaning to say.)
Rest assured, soon there will be only one word, with multiple, conflicting meanings - same as the last hundred or so conflicts. That's living language for you!
"Sheer" doesn't even make any sense in this context: "sheer force" would be twisting the tumbler so hard you break all the pins, and that would not exactly be considered "lock picking"!
What's interesting to me is how pervasive this misspelling has become. A Google search for "lock picking sheer force" finds 17,500,000 matches, but "lock picking shear force" finds only 205,000. I wonder if all these misspellings originated from this MIT guide, or if there was something else before that?