Just Curious…

I have no box break, Old School Hit, or anything else planned for today, but rather a question. I did receive some feedback on my Crack This! contest but given the number of people that viewed it, I’d like some more.

What did you think of the contest, honestly? What should I have changed if anything? Was it too difficult? Too easy?

I admit that I did not take into consideration the fact that not everyone is able to see colors so for that I apologize. From start to finish, I put no more than about 2 hours of work into it so it was a bit rushed perhaps. Anyway, I’d appreciate it if you would vote below. Comments are very welcome.

Crack This! WINNER AND SOLUTION!

Well, not even 24 hours after I unveiled the code, we have our winner! The winner was Scott of Hand Collated!!!. I’m not sure if I made the code hard enough but I didn’t want to make it so hard that nobody would get it for days on end. Anyway, here’s the solution to my contest and the meaning of all the colors and hints that I gave:

I told you that the characters you’d need would be highlighted in bold colors in selected posts. I also gave the subtle (later not so subtle) hint that clicking on my Best Of page would be of great importance as this was your starting point. When you click on this page, you’ll notice that five posts have their numbers and dates highlighted in different colors: red, orange, blue, violet, and green. The object was to go to each of these posts and write down the highlighted characters IN THE CORRECT ORDER, as in the order of the spectrum/rainbow. Remember that mnemonic device, ROY G. BIV, that you probably used in grade school? That was the key to figuring out the order OR you could’ve just looked at the original post as I highlighted the word “COLOR” in the different colors in their proper order. This was what clue 1, Follow the Rainbow, was referring to.

The characters from each post, in order were:

1. ’98 Flair (red) : XMIT0R3WICPNP1EO

2. ’97 EX-2000 (orange): SAWTBY9ECMIKE

3. Blog Bat Around (green): 9RTTALSUOYCK6HS

4. ’99 Skybox Thunder (blue): O8UN9C59EH2XR

5. ’97 Donruss Elite (violet): 5GEVOS8ETLW

The second clue was called ‘X’ Marks the Spot. The actual meaning of this was only to confirm that the letter ‘X’ was the first character in the cluster that you’d have to decode and it would serve as the point to where you have to start the “special pattern” in order to find the message which leads to me to clue 3….

Kong Sketch, Your Team Mini

What in the hell could that possibly mean??? This was a reference to the epic, EPIC, Gint-A-Cuffs competition! If you’ve been keeping up with it, you’d know that as per the scoring of Gint-A-Cuffs, a Brian Kong Sketch card is valued at 3 points or (+3) and a mini of your favorite team (assuming they aren’t the Yankees) is worth 1 point or (+1). This is the pattern that was used to find the message.

So to put that all together: START THE ‘X’ AND ADVANCE 3, THEN ADVANCE 1. REPEAT UNTIL YOU GET TO THE END OF THE CLUSTER AND YOU’LL HAVE THE MESSAGE!

The winning message then reads as:

TOWINPOSTBECKETTSUCKSON99EXREVIEW

The first person to go to my review of 1999 E-X(Century) and leave a comment saying that Beckett sucks (come on, there had to be Beckett bashing) would then be declared the winner and that’s exactly what happened with Scott!
Congrats Scott and thanks to everyone that has checked out my blog in the past 24 hours (over 1,000 of you which is ridiculous traffic for this blog)! I hope you had fun trying to figure out my nonsense and that nobody went crazy trying to figure it out. Who knows, maybe I’ll come up with something next year when the 2010 code comes out. 😉

CONTEST: Crack This! (A and G Prizes)

Alright ladies and gents, here it is…my latest, greatest, and most complex contest yet. It’s no secret that “Gintermania” has been running wild all over the blogosphere lately with the countless breaks, Gint-A-Cuffs posts, and even the unraveling of the 2009 Ginter Code (hats off to those guys). However, now lies a new challenge.

When Mike and Nick revealed how they solved the ’09 code step by step, I was not only in awe, but the contest maker in me was inspired. I was inspired to create my own little version of the Ginter code to be cracked by you, the blogosphere. Before I go any further, I did warn you in the last post that you’d all think I was nuts.

Also, before I give the instructions, here’s a look at what you’ll be playing for:

The lot will be comprised of 5 “hits” from various years of Allen and Ginter, as well as a 2001 UD Decade 1970’s quad bat of Bench/Garvey/Stargell/Foster. I will also throw in some extra A & G inserts not pictured here. The first person to correctly solve the code will win the entire lot. If the code remains unsolved after Monday, I will add at least one more non-Ginter auto/GU into the lot.

Now for the actual details of the code:

Just like the real codes from 2008 and 2009 A & G, my code also reveals a specific command.

The first person to successfully find the message and perform the action will win the cards.

As for the actual characters that will comprise the “cluster” that you will have to decode, they are highlighted bold and in colors in selected posts. You must find these characters in the correct order to break the code. Once you have all the characters, you will have to figure out the “special pattern” that will spell the message out for you.

Unlike Topps however, I will give you some clues that will be vital to breaking this code. Commit these to memory:

1. Follow the Rainbow.
2. ‘X’ Marks the spot.
3. Kong Sketch, Your Team Mini

Good luck to all who choose to take this task head on. May the best (*cough* bestofpagehint *cough) win…

Now, get crackin’!
P.S. There are more than three clues in this post.

P.P.S. I told you I was nuts!

Contest This Weekend!

Hello blogosphere…

Do you like contests? Yes?

Do you like Allen and Ginter? Yes???

Would you like to participate in a very special contest where you can win Allen and Ginter cards (and more)?!?!? I thought so….

Then stay tuned. This weekend (likely Saturday), I will announce a very special contest that I’m pretty sure will be unlike any contest you’ve ever seen on any blog, including this one. I’m not sure how well received it’ll be and you all might think I’m nuts by the end of it, but still……it should be plenty of fun. 🙂

Gint-A-Cuffs: Packs 21-24

Finally….the conclusion of my Gint-A-Cuffs box!

Pack 21:

#59 Mark Reynolds
#165 Chase Utley (+2)

#126 Trevor Crowe
#107 Bryan Berg
#251 Carl Crawford
#307 Hunter Pence SP (+5)

Mini A & G Back #276 Michael Phelps (+2)

National Pride #NP23 Chien-Ming Wang (-1)

Total: 8

Pack 22:

#115 Ryan Doumit
#138 Garrett Atkins
#86 Michael Cuddyer
#216 Derek Lowe
#249 John Higby
#158 Sigmund Freud
Mini #198 Raul Ibanez
National Pride #NP20 Akinori Iwamura

Total: 0. They can’t all be winners…

Pack 23:

#7 John Smoltz
#103 Aaron Harang
#142 Lashawn Merritt
#114 Hideki Matsui (-1)
#AGR-JM Joe Mauer Jersey (+40: 8 pt. relic x 5 for being on the Favorites list)

Mini #199 James McDonald
National Pride #NP22 David Wright (+4)

Total: 43. It won’t be enough to win the competition, but pulling a second “favorite player” relic was pretty darn good.

Pack 24:

#68 Jamie Moyer
#248 Colby Rasmus
#133 Roy Halladay
#27 Chien-Ming Wang (-1)
#349 Aubrey Huff SP (+5)

Baseball Highlights Sketch Card #AGHS21 David Price (+3)

Mini #89 Elvis Andrus
National Pride #NP21 Scott Hairston

Total: 7

Final Box Total: 274

All in all, this was a pretty good box that put up a solid showing for Gint-A-Cuffs. Thanks to Beardy and Mark for the work they’ve put into it. We’ll return you to your regularly scheduled “old school breaks” shortly…