The Da Vinci Code Quest Winner NOT Announced
Apparently the person at Google Blogoscoped that goes by the nickname FoneJone was talking about something else when he/she said that the winner of the Da Vinci Code quest on Google was announced. The winner is still unannounced as far as I can tell.
I'm starting to wonder if there is something crazy going on behind the scenes there at Google. I have the feeling that they made a mistake in the delivery of the final round, and here's why. The puzzles in the final round were supposed to be random so people would have a difficult time benefiting from those who shared their solutions. But when people started sharing their solutions online, it quickly became apparent that each person received the same puzzle.
Why weren't the puzzles random?
This was the url Google gave the finalists:
http://www.google.com/ig/davinci/puzzle.html?puzzle=100
Why would Google append the puzzle=100 parameter? Maybe the above URL was used for testing and they forgot to remove that parameter before sending the email. Their solution was to just ignore the parameter and give everyone the same puzzles.
It's hard to believe that Google would make a mistake like this. It's more likely that Google wanted the puzzles to be the same for everyone so that no one could complain that his/her puzzle set was significantly more difficult than someone else's.
Regardless of the randomlessness (:-D) . . .
The contest ended May 21st and the date of this post is May 31st. To me, it seems like ten days should be plenty of time to figure out who won. Then again, this was a 10,000-person race on the Internet. I don't know if any Internet race of this magnitude has ever been conducted. Maybe Google was just using this contest as an experiment for something bigger and better. I have an idea of what this kind of data could be used for, and I'll post about that later. Anyone else have any thoughts about this?
I guess we'll find out who the winner was soon enough. I'll post details of the winner here when I find out from Google or Sony.
I'm starting to wonder if there is something crazy going on behind the scenes there at Google. I have the feeling that they made a mistake in the delivery of the final round, and here's why. The puzzles in the final round were supposed to be random so people would have a difficult time benefiting from those who shared their solutions. But when people started sharing their solutions online, it quickly became apparent that each person received the same puzzle.
Why weren't the puzzles random?
This was the url Google gave the finalists:
http://www.google.com/ig/davinci/puzzle.html?puzzle=100
Why would Google append the puzzle=100 parameter? Maybe the above URL was used for testing and they forgot to remove that parameter before sending the email. Their solution was to just ignore the parameter and give everyone the same puzzles.
It's hard to believe that Google would make a mistake like this. It's more likely that Google wanted the puzzles to be the same for everyone so that no one could complain that his/her puzzle set was significantly more difficult than someone else's.
Regardless of the randomlessness (:-D) . . .
The contest ended May 21st and the date of this post is May 31st. To me, it seems like ten days should be plenty of time to figure out who won. Then again, this was a 10,000-person race on the Internet. I don't know if any Internet race of this magnitude has ever been conducted. Maybe Google was just using this contest as an experiment for something bigger and better. I have an idea of what this kind of data could be used for, and I'll post about that later. Anyone else have any thoughts about this?
I guess we'll find out who the winner was soon enough. I'll post details of the winner here when I find out from Google or Sony.
Labels: google
posted by CJ at 5/31/2006 08:26:00 AM
18 Comments:
Do you think they will announce the winner? Maybe they couldn't reach the winner by phone and are moving down the list of "players with the next highest ranking."
From the Rules:
9. Rules/Grand Prize Winner's Name: For an additional copy of these Official Rules or the Grand Prize Winner's Name, send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to: The Da Vinci Code Quest On Google "Rules" or "Grand Prize Winner's Name" (specify which), P.O. Box 10301, Burbank, CA 91510. All requests must be received by July 21, 2006. The Official Rules will also be accessible from the Web Site during the Contest Period. Grand Prize Winner's name may also be posted on the Web Site and/or other media including on-air.
I think I'll mail off for them...
I forgot about that! I'll write them today. :-)
I totally agree with your post. I think that they kind of dropped the ball in this case. They had to have known that if they gave everyone the exact SAME puzzle, that there were going to be people who would not only share them with the general public (those in the 10000 loop lol) but even try to SELL Secrets on EBAY (which is kind of hard to do because the puzzle challenge isnt something that you can do that for). Irregardless of that, here's my idea and I am sticking to it, GOOGLE/SONY if youre listening, PAY ATTENTION :)
Take the top 10 or 15 fastest (NON PROGRAMMER) times, take them all to a location (that you pay for since we're paying taxes on the winnings lol) and then have those people do 5 FINAL challenges RIGHT THERE, that way there is NO cheating, NO advance d knowledge, and the BEST person with the BEST skill can TRULY win this contest once and for all.
Just my 2 cents :)
That's a good idea John. My only question for you is, how would they decide what times were "programmer times"? In your opinion, what time is way too low for a human to achieve?
For example, let's say the top 10 times are all under 10 seconds, and then the 11th best time is like 4 minutes. Do you think that would be reason enough to believe that the top 10 times were the reverse engineers? Do you think it'd be fair to disqualify people who did that? Is it fair to decide who to disqualify based on their completion time?
I think using reverse programming, macros & key-logging may fall into the following for the US rules, though not being THAT intimate with my electronics, I may be wrong.
"Rule #7:
General Conditions and Disclaimers: ...
Contest Entities are not responsible or liable for multiple Entries/Puzzles, or Entries/Puzzles that are entered by other than human means or Entries/Puzzles that are late, incomplete, lost, misdirected, forged, damaged, destroyed, tampered with, or otherwise not in compliance with these Official Rules (whether due to the fault of the participant, Sponsor, or any other Contest Entity), and all such Entries/Puzzles will be disqualified. ..."
However, just in the event things do not go as planned, they already had a way out, and that may be the hold up: (continuing from Rule #7)
"If, for any reason, Contest is not capable of running as originally planned, Sponsor, at its sole discretion, reserves the right to cancel, suspend or modify Contest or any portion(s) thereof and award prizes from among all salvageable eligible Entries/Puzzles received, if any, in a manner that is fair and equitable as determined by Sponsor."
Thoughts?
I never read that rule, but you're completely right: they have the right to cancel the awarding of the prizes.
Yikes.
Do you think they'd do that though? It would save them $100,000 but that's not a lot of money to them. It would probably do a lot more harm than that $100,000 is worth.
I agree that it would be a bad move NOT to award the prize package, but it may very well come down to putting all the non-disqualified names in a hat. Perhaps that was intended all along? The folks at Google and SONY aren't dim so they should have imagined a scenario that would include tech wizards. That being the case, finessing it into a simple drawing is an easy way out.
It's all a bit funny. I can see that the US competition has just gone bonkers, and it's ridiculous on so many levels. What's interesting is that I live in Australia. Aus and the UK didn't have the final puzzles round, we both just submitted our personal details, basically. There can't have been any similar hold up in these countries, and winners haven't been announced here either. I'm guessing that's because they're still trying to sort the US thing out, but if you're right and they DO pull the cancellation clause (in the US), where does that leave the UK and Australian participants who couldn't benefit by cheating anyway? (in the sense that we did the 24 basic puzzles and that was it, untimed as far as I know).
Admittedly our prizes are nothing compared to the US ones, but nevertheless, a competition is a competition, surely they've got to say SOMETHING??
Actually, here's another one. I just thought I'd chase up Wei-Hwa's blog (onigame), and he (rightly) is keeping very quiet about the whole thing, but this did come out:
Da Vinci Challenge
(Anonymous)
2006-05-20 03:31 am UTC (link)
Hi onigame - just wanted to thank you for the fun Puzzle challenge and I look forward to competing in more in the future. I did have one question about the Final Challenge though: were they all the same questions for everyone because of legal reasons? I can picture some hotshot corporate lawyer from Sony yelling at Google puzzle guys saying that if you make it random for everyone then they will be legally exposed for gaming/contest rule violations.
Re: Da Vinci Challenge
[info]onigame
2006-05-20 10:51 pm UTC (link)
I've been instructed to say nothing, but I think you've made a good observation.
I think it's very interesting that Wei-Hwa has been instructed not to say anything. Where can I find those comments?
>I think it's very interesting that Wei-Hwa has been instructed not to say anything
Something else we probably have lawyers to thank for.
>Where can I find those comments?
http://onigame.livejournal.com/23472.html?thread=41392#t41392
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
i think someone in webdatedotcom told me about trying to organize a contest like that... you know... since da vinci code is really a hot topic these days... as it turned out, no one was able to figure out all the clues and no one won... maybe that was what happened... just a thought...
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So, I did the final contest. It took me an hour (I did really bad at the chess part... I don't know how to play). Then again, I read some blogs where people posted the answers to the contest ... and those people i'm sure completed it within 4 minutes (It would probably take you at least a minute or two - with the answers to do the sodoku alone) and those who are just really good puzzle solvers who completed it within 11 minutes... then you had husband and wife teams who did separate puzzles - but together.
Google probably realized a lot of people cheated and may still be filtering thru that list. On the other hand, perhaps the winner chose to not have their name released.
check out this blog:
google: wwla.blogspot.com
sent away for the winner, and google mailed me (via the post) the winner's name. Anthony N. from Collierville Tennessee. Has anyone heard this yet, or know who he is or what is time is?
Michael
http://www.metromapper.org
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