A message to all of you who completed Geek Chase

Unlucky.
I didn’t even get all of Dibbley’s letters but I put the one’s I did have into an online anagram-solver with a different letter of the alphabet each time until I got it.

I hope the compatition has actually closed after I’ve said that…

I hope the compatition has actually closed after I’ve said that…

Fuck, I should have published this a week earlier…

I did something similar - I got five letters, then cross-checked against a huge list of nine-letter words.

Amusingly, the very first word I tried after eliminating the ones that didn’t contain my five letters, picked at random from the remainder, was the right one :D

Hey, at least you could enter Geek Chase. So if anyone should be typing “FUCK. OFF.” in all caps like that, well, I think it oughta be me. So there.

I definitely agree with Arlene on this one. :)

I always thought that it *expired* today, but checking the Terms & Conditions, it says: “The closing date for receipt of entries is 12 February 2007.”

You might actually have today, then? I don’t know. I just assumed it was the Sunday, as that was the end of the week…

£5000 what could you do with that type of money? I mean you could pay someone to do the Geek Chase…

Well, one of the elements is time-limited. So there’s one password that the clue to find is now inaccessible, and won’t be accessible again until tomorrow - so if you’ve not got at least two passwords, ferget it now even if you have today :)

Yeah, I realised that earlier - even if the deadline’s midnight tonight, you would need to have done part of the hunt before a certain point today to be able to make it!

If you’ve solved it and have got the address, though, I’d have a go at emailing it. Got to be worth a shot!

And can I just say - I thought the time-limit range was absolutely bastard. I’m wondering which will have kept the entries down more - the Dibley thing, or that…

Well I stuck on password 2 for ages aswell but then I decided to try again a few weeks ago to make sure i did it in time and found it within a few hours.

I didn’t get any of them. Not even password 1 - that was found by my other half.

Basically, I’m just shit.

Amusingly, the very first word I tried after eliminating the ones that didn’t contain my five letters, picked at random from the remainder, was the right one :D

For the record, since I knew the contest might still be on, I wasn’t entirely truthful - it was the first word I tried, yes, but it wasn’t at random, it was just first alphabetically :)

>I didn’t get any of them. Not even password 1 - that was found by my other half.
Basically, I’m just shit.

Don’t worry about it John, I only got 5 letters for the Dibbley anagram and that’s as far as I got.

Ah well!

Wonder how long these sites are going to stay online…they should be made public for a time before they go down, as they’re pretty interesting even outside of the game.

Andrew did mention something on TOS a while ago about maybe making it public for a while after the contest was over. I definitely hope so.

So when will the winner be informed?

So when will the winner be informed?

“6. The winner will be notified by telephone within 6 weeks after the closing date of the competition.”

Oh, and:

“10. The winner’s name is available on request by sending a stamped self addressed envelope to the following address after 12.02.2007: Beat the Geek Competition, Marketing Department, 2 entertain Video Limited, 33 Foley Street, London, W1W 7TL.”

6 weeks? Bloody long wait.

Presumably, then, the winner could find out their name by sending an SAE in the interm…? ;-)

I wonder when the draw is made… and if the results will get announced on TOS.

Once the dust has settled, we’ll hopefully get round to posting some kind of solution or walkthrough… if TOS doesn’t beat us to it!

>I wonder when the draw is made… and if the results will get announced on TOS.

I’d imagine TOS will make an announcement when the times comes, so long as 2entertain allows it.

>Once the dust has settled, we’ll hopefully get round to posting some kind of solution or walkthrough… if TOS doesn’t beat us to it!

Does “once the dust has settled” mean after people who weren’t allowed to play before have a chance to try it, and “some kind of solution or walkthrough” will come with some large, friendly signs marked major spoilers? :)

Well, no, it means when the competition’s definitely over and there’s been some word from TOS as to when results will be announced. And yes, of course, it’ll contain spoiler warnings! It’ll be intended as either an explanation for those who got stuck, or, if the site’s still up and people are still playing for fun, a helpful way of getting past bits that they might still be stuck on.

Of course, if we post something called “Beat The Geek Walkthrough”, you’d have to be pretty stupid to click on it if you didn’t want to be spoiled… ;-)

Also, I’m a little confused by this “weren’t allowed to play before” thing. Anyone, anywhere could have played the game - it’s just that only UK residents were allowed to actually enter the competition. It’s possible to play it right through to the end without actually entering the competition part; and alright, you’re supposed to buy Beat the Geek to get the initial address (although UK laws mean that the game is technically a “no purchase necessary” affair, if you read the small print), but do you mean to tell me you don’t know a single UK-based fan who could have told you the address so that you could have had a go?

How interesting. When the contest was announced on TOS, I understood “the competition is only open to UK residents” to mean the Geek chase game itself, so didn’t pursue the thought any further. The address for the game wasn’t posted on TOS or its webboard, or independently on BTLi. On the various RD-related forums I visit with international membership, the only friends playing the game live in the UK. No one from outside the UK even hinted they had tried it that I can recall, either publicly or in private to me. Whatever the legalities though, with some national-specific websites, if you are outside the designated service region you may not be able to access them. For example, certain content is only accessible to UK residents for a period of time— like what ITV did with the IT Crowd webcasts.

So, Seb, you are the first person to suggest to me that there may have been an alternative to waiting to play.

Looking back no one here specifically said you couldn’t either. Jon’s original post makes a comment about Australia however later on in the comments section Phil clearly indicates he is ‘playing’ and clears up the ‘entering’ issue with Andrew.

The point is that the contest was only open to UK residents, and was designed to promote the DVD - encouraging people to buy in order to win the cash. So we very deliberately didn’t make the first site address available.

In a rare, smart move there was very little ‘spoiler’ material posted online by the players. The divadroid.info address being given out would have made for more players, which means more brains solving the problem…and thus risking more spoilers going out online. (And, of course, overseas fans maybe offering to help a UK entrant in exchange for a split of the prize money.)

All ways round, it’s been great to see so few people risking their own chance of winning by giving this info out. And sure, Leelu COULD have asked a UK friend for the address - we didn’t restrict viewing of the sites - but I’m actually chuffed that that didn’t happen too often.

Anyway, it’s all moot now and the sites are available to all. And I imagine reddwarf.co.uk will publish the solution in the FAQ in the fullness of time. Now things have closed, though, I’d be interested in any feedback.

My first bit of feedback then - the Dibbley anagram was an absolute bastard, and I got stuck on it - but now I know the solution, I can’t say it was unfair. An absolute bastard, yes - but not unfair. I should have got it.

Bah.

Well, my feedback is this: Kudos to Andrew, GNP and 2 entertain for now opening up the Geek Chase to all! :D One question, though: will the game be up permanently? Today’s announcement on TOS didn’t say.

> Today’s announcement on TOS didn’t say.

Guess why.

I found that the hardest bit was finding what to search for on the JMC website. But i read the hints on TOS and decided to go through EVERY site again and read EVERYTHING.

I got zero passwords, 8 dibbley letters, and the fact that I haven’t beat the game yet is slowly driving me insane.

The first password is very easy to get… but I still missed it!

We’ll have a walkthrough soon.

Can people just post the passwords, or at least good clues as to what they are? A walkthrough is just flat out not going to happen if it hasn’t happened yet. So I just think we should share the wealth of info before they shutdown the Geek Chase sites, for those of us who haven’t beaten it yet (me included).

A walkthrough is just flat out not going to happen if it hasn’t happened yet.

Actually, that’s wrong - it’s been written. It just needs tidying up for publication, but Seb’s away this weekend. We should definitely be publishing it next week.

Having said that, I don’t want to stop people discussing the thing on here, whatever the status of the walkthrough - so don’t let that stop anyone giving out information here.

> Can people just post the passwords

What’s the point of that?

> So I just think we should share the wealth of info before they shutdown the Geek Chase sites, for those of us who haven’t beaten it yet (me included).

The sites are going to be live for a long time yet! Certainly until rd.co.uk posts its own walkthough later in the year. And just entering passwords someone else gave you isn’t exactly ‘beating the game’. There’s no super-cool special ending, remember - it’s not live a videogame. All you’ll find is an address to email.

I’m sorry, I’ve always had a problem with patience.

can we at least get hints in the meantime?

Yeah, when I post the G&T walkthrough, I won’t actually be posting the passwords (or any of the codes, except for the Dibbley anagram). There’s no point - the walkthrough will be designed to help you if you’re stuck, not to just give you the answer. If you want to play through the game while following it, you’ll still need to play the game.

Incidentally, I wonder if the winner has been informed yet, and when their name will be announced?

I’ve given up any hope that it might be me… ;-)

It’ll be Ian. It’s always Ian. You lose your keys -It’s Ian. A picture
falls off the wall - It’s Ian. That time we used up a whole bog
roll in a day… actually that was Ian.

you won the contest?

> Please can someone post the password for the (hope this is not a spoiler even though it is all over!) crapola website, I have done everything else that I can think of I have sent about 30 e-mails to get the password too but no response!

Thirty?! Why haven’t you just emailed the address on every site’s Help page to ask about this directly?!

Also, have you checked that the response hasn’t been dumped in a Spam folder?

Hi guys - I was doing the Geek Chase and was SO stuck yesterday so did some google searching to see if I was the only one - however, had a blast at it last night and managed to finish it! I can’t believe I actually saw it through to the end!!!! If anyone out there needs any help with anything, I won’t give you the answers but I can give you a nudge if you require it.

SO chuffed!

I’m quite pleased with the amount of activity we still get on Geek Chase. There are always people mailing one of the game sites for a certain password - it seems to be providing a lot of entertainment. Which is nice.

They were having some “technical difficulties” with the crapola email, so I emailed the privacy@reddwarf.co.uk email address and they sent it to me instead.

> They were having some “technical difficulties” with the crapola email,

Why the quote marks? We WERE having technical difficulties! Honest!

Note how I didn’t mention a site by name in my post in case it spoiled the reveal… :-)

I loved the Geek Chase! I had massive amounts of fun doing it, and the clues are genius. More please.

Oops, sorry if I spoilt it for anyone, and the quote marks weren’t meant as anything. I managed to get through the chase and thoroughly enjoyed it - thank you grant naylor productions…et al.
Nik x

You’re more than very welcome. Stuff like this makes it worth the time I spent on it!

I really need to set some time aside and do this game front to back. I started ages ago (when the prize was still up for grabs) but gave up (for some reason I can’t even remember!) after looking at only a few of the sites.

I absolutely loved what I saw, though. Excellent stuff. And I expect the sites only get better…

>(for some reason I can’t even remember!)

Oh, I remember now. GNP was holding back the special edition, with Rob / Doug / Andrew commentary, the missing contest material from Smeg Outs and a re-cut documentary for series III.

I was waiting for that.

Hmm. Do you know, I might have another play of it - see how much I’ve forgotten. And we never did do our DwarfCast on it, did we? Shame, as I genuinely thought it was bloody excellent.

There’s still time to do something on it, I reckon.

I was going to do a write-up at one point - but I reckon it’d suit a Dwarfcast better.