Darn. I tore through 4 of the 5 puzzles with great speed, but got stuck on the very first puzzle, the Sudoku challenge. Despite the fact that my only exposure to Sudoku has been through this contest, I had been doing quite well on them. My problem was purely observational; I kept on putting symbols in place that were clearly violating the constraints. Hey, it's hard to keep track of nine weird looking symbols. So in the end, it took me 45-50 minutes to do the whole thing, 95% of that on the Sudoku, which I'm pretty sure is not winner-worthy. That's OK -- I heard the grand prize would've required more than $30,000 of federal taxes.

So, on a whim, I decided to complete some of the puzzles on Google's movie tie-in, the Da Vinci Code Quest. It consisted of 24 puzzles over 24 days -- I did the first 21 bored on a Sunday and finished the rest right after they were released. The first 10,000 participants to finish all 24 were promised a cryptex in the mail and a chance to win some prizes.

Today, in the mail, I got a mysteriously heavy box in the mail from noblecollection.com. Inside was one of the 10,000 winning cryptexes. The code to open the cryptex was written on the box: "GRAIL." I entered it in, and the cryptex opened up. (Is there any way for me to change the code?) A rolled parchment was tucked inside, with the words "Congratulations!" and a URL written upon it. Now I get to partake in a time-sensitive puzzle contest this weekend -- if I complete in the shortest time, I win.

Here are some pictures of the cryptex:

  

A hokey contest when I first started, yes, but getting the cryptex in the mail was pretty neat.