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WOOOO HOOOO!! Thanks for running this most excellent contest and congrats to ZSandmann, thanks for not beating me to the finish line! What was the answer? 30 is what I came up with, although that was only after I came up with 29 on the first quick count, then 30 when I actually breathed while counting the squares, and 30 again on the 3rd try just to make sure!

WOOOO HOOOO!! Thanks for running this most excellent contest and congrats to ZSandmann, thanks for not beating me to the finish line!

Had the math done in seconds (incorrectly! ), was copying the puzzle info into the subject line of an email, realized I didn't have the email address on this page of the cointest, and then my network died when I tried to page back! Double-checked my math and realized I was a major league goof ball, good thing my net was down, be pretty embarrassing to turn in the first incorrect answer! (looks like my corrected answer was at least on target!)

This article from gizmodo with info from AT&T pretty much sums up how much they intend to nail the distribution of un-subsidized iPhone 3Gs to the floor in the US. Several times. With a large hammer. Ouch! Your nailage may vary in countries outside the US! Gizmodo details on AT&T iPhone 3G sell/activation process There are plenty of other places discussing this issue, but gizmodo is the first place I've seen with details supposedly from AT&T policy. If you really want to stay on top of this topic before the release of the 3G iPhone in a month or so (when facts will hopefully replace rumors), surf yourself to macsurfer and look for links that seem relevant. They cull the wheat from the chaff from tons of sites many times a day for mac/iphone related news, just scroll until something looks relevant.

Speculation is rampant on the various sites tracked by macsurfer as to how this is going to play out.... Due to the switch to a traditional cell phone model of discounted hardware being subsidized up front by companies like AT&T (vs ongoing fee per month with the v1 iPhone contract with AT&T in the US) and that Apple will supposedly no longer sell the phones online, it kind of implies that if you want to buy one at an Apple store or a cell phone retailer, you aren't walking out the door without a 2 year contract. Although it does sound like the penalties have gone down a bit, so maybe if you sign a contract, walk out of the store and immediately cancel, you'd be out US $300 + ~ US $200 cancel fee, or about the same cost as the original v1 phone before price drop. Note the monthly fees in the US would be $10 more than for the v1 phone, and also the plan no longer includes the 200 SMS per month, so you'd be out even more per month if you add that to your plan if you are a v1 user considering an upgrade.

Sounds like fun!! From taking our son on a 2+ mile hike starting at over 6K elevation around part of Mt. Rainier in WA state a few years ago, I know if you get one of those 3-wheel jog-strollers, you can pretty much motor over anything in your path that is considered a trail. Tackling an 11km hike with 3 toddlers, wow you sure do want a challenge all right! (click on pic for full size image) (click on pic for full size image)

26! Going to see Jimmy on Saturday in Raleigh!

Wow that is an amazing number of oakbucks! Either you are a serious collector or a group purchaser! I only have 90 oakbucks laying around and 3 die sides (not counting any bucks/die sides that may have been included in the monthly club shipments) To keep this on topic, if anyone wants to trade a micro I don't have for a 5 spot oakbuck or a trackable non-micro I don't have for a 10 spot oakbuck, drop me a line! Various mostly-up-to-date coin lists in sig line below... If I don't trade them, no big loss short term, expecting to be at a mega event before they expire!

And you beat me in the standings by this >< much! That's what I get for starting puzzles at work and then getting sucked into never-ending meetings, doh!! That and screwing up and over-thinking the Wizard's Chamber and getting locked out for 24 hours. Just remember the KISS principle when you are off to see the wizard, and you are likely to beat my time!

Ok, this is scary, I was born in Longview, WA and lived in state for about 25 years, including 10 years in the greater Seattle area, and I still had no clue where Convington would be. Just ran the gamut of nearby place-names that I know and could find without a GPSr: Maple Valley, check. Auburn, check. Renton, check. Kent, check. Algona and Pacific, check (only because they were on the route for the STP! ) You are definitely in the backyard of many coin collectors / traders in the greater Puget Sound region, boy do I envy you!

Yeah, I think the staff at several local post offices think I'm a loony, although giving the ringleader at the nearby PDC (aka Processing and Distribution Center, aka the biggest USPS warehouse within 100+ miles of your home) a postal jeep coin helped! Anything sent internationally, I'm now in the habit of listing as a gift, described as "game token (xx)", and I try and reduce the per coin value down to keep the total value below US $20. If that is too high of a value for you international recipients, please let me know, as it is hard to tell what a good value is given the weak US dollar in the international market these days.

Affects sales, true. Affects trades with long-time collectors, perhaps not so much, methinks, as they are more about the true art and meaning of a coin, and less about the GS (not GC, please note) propagandized belief that all coins must have a unique and purty icon. Perhaps the fact that each trackable coin sale generates a less than nominal fee drives their motive? And that the unique icon increases that cost per coin, hmmm, what says that? Okay, and to get this thread back on track, if someone is frequently gathering coins and completely ignoring the missions of said coins (whether stated on a mission statement with the coin, or merely on the coins TB listing page), that to me is a bad thing.

Okay, so while that isn't exactly naming names and pointing fingers, I'm pretty sure I know the TB/coin clique in the greater Seattle area of which you speak, as a number of my coins have traveled through their TB "motels". While I can neither condone nor disparage their styles of gathering/moving TBs/coins, they do seem to take the extreme of sucking up any and all that are in their path, versus picking up a few here and there to help along their way.

Most every serious icon ho that I know (and it ain't just one or two! ) are satisfied with getting lists of discoverable coins at events, which is much faster than trekking out into the wilds of non-event-land and finding actual caches to get those icons! For those few souls that actually get their icons the hard way, more power to 'em, at least they are out finding caches and moving coins! I'd rather my coins move anywhere, regardless of their primary mission, rather than being stuck in a cache for months on end. Which is why the mission statement I include with my traveling coins has some primary mission particular to each coin, and the secondary mission is always to just move anywhere, and take a picture if you can.

Hmm, they should be there, I'm seeing yours as 80th for miles, 47th (tie) for caches, 79th (tie) for states; King Finders I'm seeing as 81st, 72nd (tie) and 70th (tie). Due to the dynamic nature of the page and my lack of web page building skills, the frame that contains the dynamic standings HTML doesn't resize on browser font size change, so if you have a large font size, it may overflow the box and get chopped off at the bottom.

Ok, the Hippie Bus Race to Sacramento standings have been updated!! There are now over a dozen racers dropped into the event, and a number of others either en-route or dropped into other local events or caches. Someone track down that tie-dye wearing coin guy who is about 7 feet tall at the meet n greet tonight or the event tomorrow, and get a pic of him holding onto a bunch of racers!!

Yep, that is true....still gnawing through logs at work, can only slack off so fast on the company dime!

So after staring at TB pages for the last hour or two, something visually was bugging me, and just now verified what it is....somebody changed the coin icon for the Road to Sacramento coin! It used to be a 3D profile from the side/above of a cartoonish looking green VW bus, now it is apparently a 2D pic of the actual coin! There definitely is a mass migration underway right now, over half of the racers I've updated so far today either are already dropped into GW6, have been picked up with a log saying headed to GW6, or were dropped somewhere on a route along the way to GW6 hoping to hitch a ride.

Other than the one person (SEWdaugh, future CIA/NSA agent? ) who shot straight through without pausing or getting locked out at the Wizard's Chamber, pretty much everyone seems to hit the wall when arriving at the Wizard's chamber. I sure did! Just a matter of banging your head on the wall long enough to knock a hole big enough to climb through! Oh, and those nice 24 hour recovery periods when you click in the wrong place, that'll give you PLENTY of time to reconsider your initial choice!!

There are plenty of coiners going to the event, just a matter of whether any of them are running the TB exchange, if so, maybe have them collect the racers as they come in so they don't run off right away, take a few group pics, and if owner's request it, maybe one of the GW6 organizers could mail a bunch of them back to me and I could route them individually back to their owner (along with any prize winnings, hint hint ) Another alternative, there is a good sized contingent attending from Raleigh (lots of the GW5 organizers and various NCGO officers), look any of them up and see if they'll cart a racer back to me in Raleigh for mailing back to the owner. Time to update the standings later today, as there is a mad rush to get to the finish line it appears!

Thanks, definitely a challenge to complete all the puzzles, especially before the keys are given! Now just have to figure out the puzzle on the "congrats" page..

Cute coin, and boy do I love sushi as well! Not sure I want to spring for the coin cost & shipping, is that a 1.5" coin or is it larger? If you're entertaining trades for a coin, I'd definitely be interested!

Got my turtles today, wow did they turn out great looking!! And a bonus cache mini-pencil was included as well!

They provide great descriptions, examples and animated images showing how to use the decoder for the various encryption types used in the game. The challenge is trying to figure out what the "key" is for each puzzle, as it may not be displayed initially, and you have to wait an hour or more before it is revealed in some cases. Once you get the hang of using the decoder and do some pattern analysis (well at least for the earlier puzzles ), you can guess which blocks of encrypted text should translate to a word or phrase you expect in the "plain" text, and attempt to reverse that to figure out the key. Not sure if that description of attacking the cypher to determine the key makes sense or not, but once you have the key, in general it is simply a matter of spinning the wheel and figuring out the translation for each encrypted letter. Their keys are pretty good on the later puzzles, so even using a dictionary-based brute force attack may not always work (I should know, got stuck on the 6th puzzle and couldn't brute-force my way past! )

You can always make a paper one to play around with for their online Hobbit game, that's what I was doing yesterday while waiting for the real coin to show up. Made it all the way to the final puzzle with no mistakes using a combination of reverse-puzzling and brute force (woo for perl scripting ), then screwed up by coming up with the wrong answer, which was a big OW, as the penalty for a wrong choice had escalated from an hour timeout to 24 hours! I think the real coins are likely to arrive in my mailbox before I get past the @#$*#! Wizard!