Finished Da Vinci Code Quest on Google I have completed the Da Vinci Code Quest on Google. This was basically a 2 part advertisment campaign by Sony (maker of Da Vinci Code the movie) and Google. For 24 days a new piece of the quest was available to be conquered. These were usually some flash games mixed with some oddball questions. You know, translate this psuedo-language into English or answer this trivia question or watch this movie.

Some Google service was used to view/search for every answer. Google Video, Google Books, etc. Anyway, they weren't exactly impossible, but they weren't easy enough to answer without looking most of them up. At the end, if you were one of the first 10,000 people to finish the 24th puzzle, you were considered a "Finalist". The servers hosting the game (or something) had some hiccups...so perhaps some of the ordering of those initial finishers were out of order. Plenty of people complained...but who really cares?

Well, by making it into the final 10,000 you were promptly shipped a Cryptex in the mail. It's this sort of combination locked storage container. It's supposed to have vials of vinegar which will dissolve the parchment found within to prevent any attempts at breaking it open without using the correct code. Anyway, the one I got has no vinegar, and it doesn't even have a complete code. Even though the password says it requirs 5 letters...only the last 2 letters are truly necessary.

So, as a finalist I was permitted to take on the final challenge: a 5-part test that did not include any of the oddball trivia questions. After all was said and done I completed it in about 6.5 minutes. Many people took well over an hour to finish the same test. Did I win? No. A couple of people managed to finish a hair under five minutes. But maybe that's a blessing in disguise. The prize is valued at $140,000, which at 40% tax means I would owe $56,000 in taxes next year (just for this prize). Of course there are ways around paying that full amount...but it would still add up to probably $20,000 in taxes. That's definitely money I would not have planned on spending (even for trips to New York, London, Paris, Rome, flat screen tv, mp3 players, laptop, etc).  ¶ 11:41 AM