Not part of the contest:

Dudley?

Yup.

Hey, remember when we were kids and there was that arcade in town and Old Man Konowitz had that crazy contest with a $10,000.00 dollar prize?

Oh yeah, Hey, wasn’t he also named “the most handsome” man to ever live?

Yeah, I’m pretty sure I remember that.

Oh, and remember when he had that kick-ass 2000 V6 Mustang that he bought a speaker system and 18” low-pro tires for?

Why are you ending your sentence in a preposition? Also, no I don’t remember that, didn’t he talk about having that car IN the year 2000? We weren’t even born. Dude had a vanity license plate though, yikes.

You’re allowed to end your sentence in a preposition in conversation to help the flow and really, ending a sentence with a preposition is only frowned upon in formal writing, which this isn’t, it’s a conversation that we’re having AS adults in 2054 about some arcade owner that you and I barely remember and now you’re just making it weird-er than it already was and I don’t know what you thought that was proving and also, “for” is sometimes a conjunction, which doesn’t apply here but still and also I like vanity plates, I think they’re clever.

Well, grammar man, that’s definitely a run on sentence and vanity plates are for idiots.

Why are you sitting in the front of this Uber again?

 

1/9/24: ANNNNNND SCENE and sorry in advance for the inside baseball that is to follow. I’m going to name drop my friends but you don’t need to stalk them or anything, literally everyone, and I mean everyone, is in the dark about this. My business partner Ryan is literally trying to win this prize because I’m the only one that knows anything and I think in a lot of ways, the more you know about me, the harder this might be as you might just overthink everything. I will tell you that kind of like Ready Player One…this isn’t like ONE clue that’s posted and you get to figure it out, get entered into a raffle, and win $10,000.00. I anticipate the most clever people that actually give a Wade Watts level commitment to finding my treasure will spend a good 100-200 hours doing so. Sound daunting? I hope so! Ten grand in 200 hours is still 50 bucks an hour, so that’s not nothin’. PLUS, The contest opens January 16th at 12:00AM and runs until July 28th at 12:00AM, exactly 200 days, so it’s my hope that you have 1 hour per day from then til then to win $10,000.00!

 

11/24/22: As I sit here in November of 2022, having just rewatched The Goonies (Brad, suck it, it’s a great film), I realize that this weird and wonderful life is only fun if people make it fun. So I’m going to make your life (a little more) fun, should you choose to compete in my challenge. I think I’m going to do this on the one year anniversary of the arcade, which is October 15th. I have a year-ish to come up with enough riddles, challenges, etc, to occupy some of you for quite a while. I’ll be honest, it’s kind of weird talking to a future audience? Hi future people. It’s November 2022, the best movie I’ve seen this year is Top Gun: Maverick. Top Gun 2: Electric Boogaloo was probably taken. Like everything in my life, my guess is that this will run long and I won’t make my deadline, but because no one knows about this yet, as Fred Armisen would say as Joy Behar: “WHO CAYES?” (Ben updating here in 2024, of course I ran long)

I do want these 10-20 year old kids in town (in 2024) to say “man, do you remember old man Konowitz and his contest?” We all have people in our lives from the past that we didn’t know that well but did something cool. This contest is about doing something cool that will possibly be remembered. It’s also about $10,000.00. I would prefer to hold onto that amount of money for my retirement, so this isn’t one of those “oh I’m going to make sure someone wins” things. This might go unclaimed. What I WILL say, is that the person that gets the furthest along through my clues will be honest to goodness handsomely rewarded. So good luck, and as always: no purchase necessary, but you might need to collect a donation or two for a good cause in order to get where you need to go. Remember, it’s all part of the contest! You have to enter to win!