Static Zombie

"I've heard that by 10:20, all 10,000 slots had been filled."

Oy. After you submitted the entry form, did you get any confirmation at all whether you were in the 10,000? Please say "no" and thereby keep my hopes alive. :)

Tom Hanks swung by with a balloon bouquet, but otherwise no. Just wait by the mailbox, I suppose-- cryptexes are supposed to arrive in the mail by May 18.

by 10:20? I started to play the game @ :48, but I still can enter the final.(I guess)

"Tom Hanks swung by with a balloon bouquet, but otherwise no."

Damn, I love balloons! :(

and how did you know about 10:20?

People were talking on a blog (http://www.student-rant.blogspot.com/) that's been fanatically tracking the contest, and reporting getting "the contest is closed" messages around that time.

Nobody has received confirmation that they're a finalist yet. According to the rules, emails will be sent on the 15th.

Oh, well, if that is what they are basing it on I am pretty sure they are very wrong.

I got one of those messages prior to 1:10 Eastern as did various others while people after submitted fine. There was obviously a problem with people hammering the servers all at once resulting in some screwups. I am worried that mine didn't get submitted correctly too, despite my finishing at 1:05. I ended up filling out the registration form twice but not at all clear it really went through correctly. Note also that I believe it was the Sony servers that were at fault and not Google's. Google is much more used to dealing with heavy traffic and I think they would have been vastly smarter to put all of this on Google servers.

The lack of confirmation was annoying... even just a fact that the Submit button worked... I peaked later at the main page, and it "gave" me the oppurtunity to fill out the entry form again, but I didn't know if that meant I had done it wrong the first time, it had not been accepted the first time, or if submitting two was even legal.

I was done with the puzzle and "submitted" (assuming it did work) by 10:10, so my hopes are up too..

And, no "captcha" for me or swinging balloons that I remember... rats!

i have received an email confirming my submission.

Yes, me too! Don't know if it was one of the first 10,000 but I do know I got all 24 puzzles right and my entry was submitted... woohoo!

I actually got 2 confirmation Emails for some reason... but I am certain I was not in the first 10,000 as I didn't submit until after work - was closer to 6pm than 10am.

Larry, would you mind going to www.google.com/davincicode and telling us what you see? What I see is a redirect to "final_puzzle_too_early.html." There's a theory that if you see the redirect you're in the final 10,000, but I doubt that—I think the redirect is pulling from the same list of registrants they used for the mass email, and thus proves nothing. But it'd be interesting to test with someone who knows for sure they're out.

I was on a plane at 10am, finished it that evening and still get the redirect to final-puzzle-too-early.

I got my CRYPTEX today - yeah!

Me too. Strange that only two of the five rings seem to matter.

Looks like they're showing up for lots of people - already several on eBay: http://search.ebay.com/cryptex_W0QQfromZR40

No cryptex for me. No email either. I finished about 10:02 by my clock. Maybe it'll come tomorrow.

I just got an email saying I was not a finalist, and I finished within three minutes of starting the final puzzle. How could that be? Maybe they were using the total combined solving time for all the puzzles? I don't know.

Sigh. Oh well, it's just a tchotchke. I can't believe I put this much time into this thing and didn't make the finals.

On a completely different note, it seems to me that the finals can be gamed the way they have them set up. Since people can start at any time over the two day period, all someone has to do is hook up with another finalist. One player finishes the finals and transmits the answers to the other player, who then starts the final round and just enters the answers as fast as possible.

Don

Another NOT A FINALIST here.

I think even seeing another person go through the sequence will help by giving you a sense for the puzzle types, even if they randomize the answers.

When I did a Google search for some answer or other, I came upon sites sharing answers to this game, so I would imagine the same thing might happen for the finals, with few starting it and perhaps blogging about it and others gleaning as much as they can. Once you botch it and know you botched it, why not post? The other alternative is to hope 9,999 people do worse than you did.

I didn't get a cryptex myself, but I visited a friend last night he had his on the counter. My wife and I had almost figured out "the last two letters" before I glanced at the bottom of the box and saw the "secret" code printed right on it. I can't believe it took 4 people more than 20 minutes to notice that little detail.

Incidentally, according to a throw-away comment at the end of this Business Week article, 100,000 people finished all 24 puzzles. That's either more or less than I expected—I haven't decided which.