Eurobricks Raffle and Mystery Treasure Hunt

[Siegfried]

Well, next time you should have properly randomized filenames and/or URLs to make the brute-force approach more difficult, this time they all matched a simple regular expression.

Yeah? I can't see it. Do you mean the 4xxx part? Was that enough to find it?

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4116/4919163059_0551d3cc83_m.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4082/4919163137_0a75dd0033_m.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4134/4919163295_613d83b36c_m.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4121/4919163195_c51d5db376_m.jpg

I gave it a go and you get a lot of hits, but I suppose it's doable. Could we combat that? Only if we avoided Flickr.

So the people that didn't win will feel better now that everyone that won got all 16.

Well I hope so!

Wow, I was under the impression that the 100% completion rate was low. It would have been funny if someone got all 7 entries drawn. I'm sure who ever would have been drawing would have gotten a laugh.

Lower that we wanted, but high enough. I picked them using a program. The people that won were removed from the list so it wasn't possible that someone was picked 7 times.

[Broken Bricks]

So the people that didn't win will feel better now that everyone that won got all 16.

Ha! Quite the contrary. That means our odds were unnecessarily decreased!

Oh well...

[KartoffelViking]

Thanks heaps WhiteFang, Siegfried and others who put this together, pats on the back to all of you!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to prepare a coffin for Mr. Bloodsucker's arrival.

[Siegfried]

Ha! Quite the contrary. That means our odds were unnecessarily decreased!

Oh well...

Huh? Please note that this was a raffle, not a test of skill. It was never intended or implied that getting all right was a guarantee of success. We wanted as many people who put the effort in to have a chance of winning, and that's why we expanded it to the less successful members. But as I said it seems most who stuck it out to the end got them all as well so it didn't make any difference.

[fred67]

Did you guys pick random minifigs? I'm asking because in the collectible trade thread, the only Series 2 I was looking for was the singer, and that's the one I won... that sounds like a giant coincidence!

Either way... thanks for a fun contest. I hope I'm reading things wrong, but it sounds like I'm picking up on some bitterness, and I know it's easy for someone who won a minifigure to say this, but if you think about all the work you did for the chance to win a random $2.00 minifigure, you have to step back and appreciate the spirit of the competition and, if you're like me, you found things you never saw before - hopefully learning something along the way.

[soc399]

Awesome! Thanks to all the staff members who helped with the raffle. I had lots of fun deciphering the clues, and winning a fig is just icing on the cake.

[WhiteFang]

Siegfried had helped me to answer many of the questions here as I was busy preparing for the presentation and other EB work commitments. I can really sense some unhappiness. Although there are some disappointments in some but the overall objective that we set is achieved. Please don't take this personally. It's similar to a lucky draw and we had tried our best to offer the maximum amount of winners based on the prize pool.

In addition, please note that this is completely random process and there are many back end administrative procedures to ensure this was carried out properly. Furthermore, the software which were used to generate the list was completely random. I have complete trust in Siegfried's program. Based on the 1 to 16 windows which were given on a daily basis, we have try our best to give a reasonable long amount of time to help you in this hunt and in exchange for a raffle ticket. We will like to hear more of your valid concerns so we could note what to be expected in such future activities.

The Staff and I had spent many months to prepare this in advance to ensure that this activity will carry out well. After all, this is our very first attempt to have this in Eurobricks so we really appreciate your honest feedback.

[fred67]

The Staff and I had spent many months to prepare this in advance to ensure that this activity will carry out well. After all, this is our very first attempt to have this in Eurobricks so we really appreciate your honest feedback.

I'm sensing a lot bitterness, too, all over $2.00 minifigures... I mean, I spent HOURS and HOURS just looking for the Spartan and the Witch, just for the chance... it was fun and I hope it was fun for everyone, and like I said - it made me explore things I didn't even know about the site (the Witch hunt sounds like an awesome game I missed... I hadn't been paying attention to the mafia games, but they really look fun).

You guys did an awesome job... you just can't make everybody happy.

[Broken Bricks]

Huh? Please note that this was a raffle, not a test of skill. It was never intended or implied that getting all right was a guarantee of success. We wanted as many people who put the effort in to have a chance of winning, and that's why we expanded it to the less successful members. But as I said it seems most who stuck it out to the end got them all as well so it didn't make any difference.

Of course! I never said the raffle was unfair or that I expected to win automatically. Quite the opposite: if you read my post earlier I specific mentioned that the contest was fair and congratulated the organizers for it.

I was just making a light-hearted comment poking fun at the idea that knowing that all winners had 16 entries would make us feel better

Truth is: it doesn't make a difference who won! All those with the same number of entries were subject to the same probabilities.

So, no. No bitterness from my part.

Congrats to the winners!

[Inconspicuous]

Congrats to all you lucky winners! I'd say the whole thing was a booming success, and I personally had a lot of fun with it. I'd love to see something like this again in the future- or maybe you crafty, clever mods can come up with something even better!

[JCC1004]

Lower that we wanted, but high enough. I picked them using a program. The people that won were removed from the list so it wasn't possible that someone was picked 7 times.

As I can tell. Well that's no fun. Are you guys planning on something similar for Series 3?

[XimenaPaulina]

Congrats to all the lucky winners! You're 'treasure hunting' has paid off.

[Cecilie]

Yey, my first time winning something at EB The DJ isn't one of my favorites, but this one is going up on the wall as a trophy to remember this glorious event

This contest was both a lot of fun and very frustrating (yeah, the weightlifter...), but it was also somewhat educational to someone who is pretty new to EB

[TLV]

In terms of feedback, I'd say contest was pretty well run, daily release of clues was a good format for latecomers to the hunt, clues were mostly well worded and results were released extremely fast.

My only concern was that instructions were not very clear. An example of a sample image attached to a post with a sample clue would have really helped. I initially thought that the minifig would actually be in the pictures in the post as it was the case for the first vampire clue. Hence I only searched more recent posts initially as I assumed that for the series 2 minifig to be in pictures in the post they would have to be fairly recent given the recent release of the series 2 minifigs.

Also like someone else mentioned there were no minifigs found in star wars and pirates forum.

Edited September 20, 2010 by TLV

[Siegfried]

Also like someone else mentioned there were no minifigs found in star wars and pirates forum.

...don't forget Technic, community, BrickFlicks, BSTF, Train, Events...

Why is this? Clues were based on a connection with the image. Thus it should be expected that most would be found in themes like Town and History. Do you think we should have went for clues that had nothing to do with the image at all?

An example of a sample image attached to a post with a sample clue would have really helped.

I do agree here. Perhaps we should have made a clue for one of the Series One figs. We'll try to if there is a next time.

I was just making a light-hearted comment poking fun at the idea that knowing that all winners had 16 entries would make us feel better

OK. Sorry for reading you wrong.

[Rick]

Woohoo! Spartan! Thanks Fangy and Sieggy (and the rest of the EB staff) for organizing this. And as fred67 correctly pointed out most of the fun was finding them all, winning is purely a bonus.

It will be hard to avoid the searching by URL, which I didn't even try when I saw the filenames (I though they were completely random). It would have to be on a server that is referenced many times on EB (otherwise you can just search by the server name), which has 'random' filenames (at least not including a fixed path).

[Fugazi]

Thank you WhiteFang, Siegfried and all the EB staff involved in this terrific raffle! You guys have really worked hard to set up this one, but the extra effort was totally worth it! It was very enjoyable to work my megablocks off for a chance to enter the raffle! This is certainly something I would like seeing again in the future. I think the level of difficulty of the clues was well balanced, and at the moment I can't think of any suggestions for improvement. Thanks a lot!

[Etzel]

Ooh, a lifeguard!

Many thanks to the staff for this contest. It was very fun and different from earlier raffles and I hope that the one for series 3 will be even better (read: more difficult clues ).

[Quarryman]

Yeah? I can't see it. Do you mean the 4xxx part? Was that enough to find it?

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4116/4919163059_0551d3cc83_m.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4082/4919163137_0a75dd0033_m.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4134/4919163295_613d83b36c_m.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4121/4919163195_c51d5db376_m.jpg

I gave it a go and you get a lot of hits, but I suppose it's doable. Could we combat that? Only if we avoided Flickr.

The 4xxx part wasn't, but 4[0-1]xx/4919 was.

flickr.*4[0-1][0-9][0-9]/4919.*_m\.jpg

Matches all of them, no false positives, at least none that showed up in my tests. As for combating it the obvious way would indeed be to avoid Flickr. Or spread them over a few more than one Flickr account and don't upload all at the same time. (I strongly suspect that the number starting with 4919... is the image's primary key, and with the amount of uploads on Flickr that number will increase a lot over just a few days). Then again, this is a question of what you want to achieve, is the goal to stop everyone from using brute force, or to make the brute force approach tedious enough not to make it worthwhile? And of course how much time and energy you want to spend.

That being said, I really enjoyed this hunt, and congratulations to all the winners. And I do hope there will be another in the future.

[Rick]

I didn't know the search engine supported regular expressions...

*off to recap regex*

[Siegfried]

flickr.*4[0-1][0-9][0-9]/4919.*_m\.jpg

Keep making posts like that and I'll be offering you an admin position!

Yeah, if we do this again I'll probably host them myself; I have full control over the URL then and I have three domain names to play with! Some could even be hosted on the EB server. To be honest I don't consider this a major problem; someone would need to find at least two to establish a pattern, and we could stick in a few extra ones that don't match the clues to make things just a little bit harder. Thanks for sharing your logic though.

[Edmond Dantes]

The 4xxx part wasn't, but 4[0-1]xx/4919 was.

flickr.*4[0-1][0-9][0-9]/4919.*_m\.jpg

Matches all of them, no false positives, at least none that showed up in my tests. As for combating it the obvious way would indeed be to avoid Flickr. Or spread them over a few more than one Flickr account and don't upload all at the same time. (I strongly suspect that the number starting with 4919... is the image's primary key, and with the amount of uploads on Flickr that number will increase a lot over just a few days). Then again, this is a question of what you want to achieve, is the goal to stop everyone from using brute force, or to make the brute force approach tedious enough not to make it worthwhile? And of course how much time and energy you want to spend.

That being said, I really enjoyed this hunt, and congratulations to all the winners. And I do hope there will be another in the future.

Yes, the pattern only supports 200 possibilities, and that would have only been a problem if all 200 were present on Eurobricks. Even then, 8% of those would have been the pics you were looking for.

[Zorbas]

First of all, a great thanks to EB Staff for organising this fantastic contest. It was really enjoyable and searching in unknown, unexplored dark lands (Bionicle, Mafia Games, some licensed themes) was really fun. Thank god I had a torch with me!

Keep organising contests like that guys! Participation is 3/4 of the fun in my opinion.

Also, congratulations to all the winners! Enjoy your trophies guys and after all, you fully deserve it!

[squiz]

Woohoo! Dont think i have ever won anything before!

Just like to say thanks to the EB staff for putting this on and giving these great prizes. I enjoyed searching for all the minifigs (well except for the weightlifter!) and i looked forward to the new clue each day. I learnt things about lego that i didnt previously know, and i browsed forums i hadnt been in before.

congrats to the other winners as well!

[Stegoceras]

Congratulations to all the winners... sadly I wasn't among them, but they way my luck's been going lately that is quite logical.

I still had tons of fun looking for a mini-figure everyday though (well maybe with exception of the witch) and I certainly hope we will see another treasure hunt in the future.