Da Vinci Code Quest In Review

Yesterday was the last day for Google's Da Vinci Code Quest. Essentially it was one flash puzzle a day and each puzzle was one of five types. There was a suduko style symbol puzzle, pairing objects only one space apart to get them down to one object, a jigsaw puzzle geoquiz, fitting square objects into minute space (presented like hanging canvas paintings), multiple choice (presented like chess) and an observation test based on google hosted videos (promos for the movie).

Of the players, the first 10,000 to finish will become finalists. Now, 10,000 might seem like a lot but it really, really, really is not. Not when you are talking about web traffic the size of google. It's like a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the audience for this thing. I finished the last puzzle, a relatively simple observation test, about ten minutes after it appeared on the net ... and I don't think I got in. You probably had to do it in more like 3 since anyone who paid attention to the book probably knew two of three questions without even referring to the video. I almost did ... and I haven't even read the book.

Actually, several of the puzzles seemed way too easy for a company which likes to challenge people with coding contests and the such. The last suduko puzzle was very difficult and so was the last canvas challenge. Both of those took more like an afternoon, but every other one took about 10-15 minutes at the most. The last puzzle was actually one of the easiest which really kinda killed the build up to the final day (but I'm guessing they wanted to end with a promo trailer).

It was kinda fun, all in all. My only big complaint is that Sony doesn't send you a confirmation that your registration went through ... or my registration didn't go through ... gee now I'll never know. Even if I had made the finals, though, I'm not sure winning the grand prize ... a bunch of items totalling over $128k ... would be. I'm trying to imagine the taxes on all the stuff.


UPDATE: The confirmation is out, but you won't get it via email. If players go to the widget on the google page that they used to access the puzzles, it will say if you're a finalist (or thank you for playing). I didn't make it. From what I can scan, the finalists answered the three questions and filled out the form in about two minutes.

Seriously, they should have made it a lot harder. All of that thinking pretty much resulted in a quick footrace at the end. The final puzzle is also time based. Finalist have to solve five more puzzles (same types, I assume) as quickly as possible between May 19th and May 21st.

The final confirmation image looks like this, for the curious.


Update Update: There was eventually an email ... although it came fairly late compared to the widget ... and twice ... and I don't think ever copped up to if you made the finals or not...


Update to the update: Apparently I'm a finalist after all. I'm a bit confused by that, since the widget made it sound like "thanks for playing" and, well, I already deleted it from my homepage.

So some of you might still be getting an email in your inbox.


tagged: google, gaming