Monday, January 09, 2006

Announcing a Contest!



ANNOUNCING A CONTEST!
Prizes: Five copies of my brand new book,
Adventures from the Technology Underground, published by Clarkson Potter/Random House. Books will be sent directly and free of charge to winners directly from my publishers. Email names and addresses will not be collected, all privacy respected.

When: Contest starts Friday the 13th

What: Here's the premise:
In 1999 I was on a game show called Win Ben Stein's Money. I flew to Los Angeles on my own nickle to try out and, son of a gun, I made it. In case you've never seen the show, it worked like this: in the first round, three contestants, (of which I was one), played each other by answering general knowledge questions in an elimination round. I made it through that round. In the second round, Ben Stein became a contestant and played the two of us remaining. I won that round and so, faced Stein in the final showdown. The final round was a head-to-head competition where Ben and I were locked in isolation booths and attempted to answer the same ten questions in 60 seconds. Ben and I tied, each answering seven of ten questions correctly, so I went home with $2350.

On Friday I will publish all ten questions they asked
me. If you can guess which three questions I missed, and provide the correct answers, I will send you a book. If more than five people guess correctly, I will draw names. If no one guesses correctly, I will provide a hint or two each day until somebody wins.

Here's a question I was asked in the preliminary round which I got correctly:
What is the modern name of the animal that North American indians called "arakum?"


Answer: raccoon
Please: one email per day per reader for the contest.
I'm not sure how the publisher handles foreign mail, so there may be shipping charges to foreign destinations.
Publisher reserves all rights and can pretty much do what they want, but I think they'll be pretty good about it.

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