The secret giveaway contest

SECRET GIVEAWAY CONTEST

I have enjoyed solving word and logic puzzles since I was five years of age. That is almost sixty years! When I was in the U.S. Army, my specialty was cryptanalysis. That is code-breaking for you civilians. With that said, let’s get started.

CONTEST RULES

1. All you have to do is decipher the encrypted message, and send your answer to me by Private Message. IMPORTANT: DO NOT POST YOUR ANSWER HERE.
2. There is no minimum number of posts required to participate. Who knows, maybe some lurkers will join just so they can play.
3. The contest is open to ALL of our friends, here, regardless of their age or country of residence. By the way, if there is anyone here who feels they may not be welcome to participate because of differences with me in the past, that is ancient history. I want everyone to feel welcome.
4. In your answer, spelling and capitalization must be correct. Punctuation is already in place, so I needn’t remind you that I don’t want to see any run-on words and sentences.
5. Sorry, only one entry per person, so you’d better make sure that you’ve dotted all your eyes (i) and crossed all your tees (t) before you submit it.
6. The encrypted message will be displayed using all uppercase letters so as not to give anything away. It is up to you to decide where capital letters are to be used.
7. Entries must be received no later than Friday, May 27th at midnight (12:00AM) Eastern Standard Time. (Subject to change.)
8. At the end of the contest, I will post the correct message and announce the winner and the SECRET PRIZE no later than Sunday, May 29th.
9. In the event that there is more than one entry with the correct answer, the names of the members with the correct answer will be thrown into a hat for a random drawing.
10. I am going to allow a 24-hour period for anyone to ask questions if there is anything that needs clarification. These questions must be posted directly to this thread so that everyone can read them. However, if I feel that the question will provide clues to the content of the coded message, I will inform you that I won’t give you an answer.
11. Once the Q&A period has ended, I will post the encrypted message and the contest will officially begin.

NOTE: For those of you who have never solved a cryptogram (coded message), all you have to do is replace one letter for another, and that letter substitution will be the same throughout the entire message. For example, if you were given the coded word, PUZGMPZ, the answer could be Lincoln. Every “P” would represent an “L” and every “Z” would represent an “N” as illustrated in this example.

 

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Now this sounds interesting, I'm in.

 

lets do it!
sounds fun

 

Sounds like fun.
Count me in!

 

May sound dumb, but, how do I PM a message?

 

I'm in!!

 

This sounds hard!! Do you have any tips for those of us that have never decoded before? Or perhaps a theme or subject we should be looking for? I'm assuming it'll be about coins, but I don't wanna focus on coins and it turns out to be about The Simpsons.

 

DHF, to pm someone, just click on their name at the left and a list of 6 options appear. One of them is private message. Easy!

This contest sounds very intriguing.

Lucy

 

Id like to take a shot at this one!

 

Sounds like fun to me!

 

sounds like my brain is gonna hurt for a week or so, but I'm in.

 

SW13,

It's all about words and the way they are formed and how they are used in relation to the other words to make a sentence.

As for the theme, it may be about anything. I will tell you that I have never watched the The Simpsons. FOR EVERYONE, there is no prohibition from asking someone for help. Does anyone know Pat Sajak or Vanna White?

Chris

 

My brain was fried just reading through the description! Can't wait to get started.. Hope that this is at a beginning level for us slow blondies! Thank you Chris this should be fun for all

 

That's strange. You don't sound like a blonde.

Chris

 

What's the encrypted message?

EDIT: You're going to post it in 24 hrs

 

See Rule #10.

Chris

 

He said he's giving everyone a 24 hour question period!!

 

I read over it 5 times and I didn't see that.

 

I love this stuff! I'm excited to try to figure it out!

 

I have a public question.Will the letters to the question be in order.just for example if you find that A equals D, would D equal H? Oh, and Im in too.