Google's Da Vinci Code Contest, Revisited

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.


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Submitted by crazymonk on Sat, 05/20/2006 - 11:40am.

What was the grand prize?

Slater | Sat, 05/20/2006 - 12:52pm

with great speed, eh? what speed was that? 45?

Geoff | Sat, 05/20/2006 - 1:34pm

oh, no, wait. thats God speed. Marco speed is 78.

Geoff | Sat, 05/20/2006 - 1:34pm

http://flash.sonypictures.com/movies/davincicodequest/us/prizing/index.h...

crazymonk | Sat, 05/20/2006 - 2:25pm

Well you could always sell those extra copies of the Frommer's guides. :)

Slater | Sat, 05/20/2006 - 2:42pm

Tough luck, you should have gotten Flea to help you, I'll bet she's good at Sudoku.

Contests with prizes over a certain dollar amount should always pay the taxes for the winners... my dad would watch the Price is Right and laugh at the contestants who won cars becuase they often clearly would be unable to pay the taxes and weren't aware of the obligation they'd just 'won.'

Ingen Angiven | Sun, 05/21/2006 - 11:46am

When I worked on Fear Factor, I always laughed at how dumb the contestants were when it came to cash and prizes. They never understood how little 50 grand was going to be after taxes. Plus, most of those kids were flat broke or in debt and would win trips around the world and whatnot, not realizing that they would need 9 grand or so to actually take that trip. At one point, the producers decided they wanted to make sure that people could actually collect their prizes, so they paid the taxes as well. The problem with that is, you also have to pay taxes on the money you are using to pay their taxes.

New York Anthony | Sun, 05/21/2006 - 1:59pm

couldn't you have written the puzzle down on paper, using 1-9 instead of the symbols? I agree, it's tough with unfamiliar symbols. ESPN the magazine had "baseball sudoku" where the positions are used and i found it rather tough.

eh, coulda woulda shoulda. maybe everyone else had trouble with the other puzzles. what were they, anyway?

Jon May | Sun, 05/21/2006 - 9:50pm
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