Like probably a million people around the world, I played Google's Da Vinci Code Quest. I basically ran through most of the puzzles in a burst of geekery a couple nights ago. Then I knocked off all but three the day before yesterday.
Yesterday at about noon Pacific, the final puzzle became available. Knowing that yesterday would probably be the day, I started working on the Restoration and Symbol puzzles that morning. So just when I finish the Restoration for Day 14 and I get the answer right, Google comes back at me and tells me that my request looks like a virus and would I please prove that I'm a human.
OK I can see that. So I enter the nonsense letters in the box and... my puzzle results are erased. It's just like I didn't even do the puzzle. What the?? So I do the damned puzzle again, burning precious minutes while thousands of other people are solving the last puzzle and it happens a second time. What a load of crap.
So I conclude one of two things. One, either Google couldn't handle the load of people sending in responses to the puzzle, or some enterprising hacker got a botnet sending in correct answers to Google and Google's own defenses kicked off legitimate contestants. Either way it pissed me off enough to blow off the contest.
So this morning I finished off the last four puzzles I had to do for the hell of it. Two Restoration, one Symbol and the final Observation. I killed them in about 40 minutes before I brushed my teeth. I sent in the information and Google made it look like I may have a chance, but the whole damned thing was compromised as far as I'm concerned. We'll see if they acknowledge the hack or whatever it was that happened yesterday when I was solving the Restoration puzzles.
Interestingly enough, I never really figured out what I was consciously doing to solve the first two restoration puzzles. It wasn't until one the third one gave me trouble that I bothered to read the actual instructions. Then it made sense and I bopped through them with a bit more alacrity.
I don't generally go in for puzzling on the norm. I get bursts of extreme geekery. Like one day I decided on plane trip to the East Coast that I would memorize Pi out to 100 digits. It turned out to be easier than I thought, once I got going. I did it in 4 hours.
I hope I never end up in jail.
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