I meant it to be a fun fact kind of thing. I didn't think someone could use it to get the answer. Grimm won by luck though, so he didn't actually completely use the "hint" to win. It was all a ******** coincidence with his "Sherlock Holmes technique". I hate how it all turned out. Jarrett, you wouldn't have won, and I feel bad for hardcore. But hey whatever...Originally Posted by Jarr3tt88Not exactly fair you gave out a hint...but congrats to grimmYou're tracks are beast sir! Speaking of....think Its time to send another FR!
Originally Posted by grimmHowdy Sharpie. I didn't do anything unsavory and only used the information provided publicly in this post to inform my decision. My guess was indeed a guess, but I did go a little Sherlock Holmes on you.
You, of your own volition, publicly posted that the closest number was off by 24,674. I took this possibly erroneous bit of information and applied it to the data set and made a plus/minus chart of all the entries, which effectively doubled the number of choices. Because of the way some of the numbers overlapped relative to the 24,674 number, I was able to eliminate them and got the list of viable possibles down to 60 or so.
I then had a jumbled mess of possibles to be sorted and so I operated under the assumption that your choice of numbers wouldn't actually be random. I scoured the list looking for anything that may be of historical significance or otherwise meaningful in some way. Of all the possibilities, two stood out with plausible date formats in the 1900's.
From here I looked at your forum name "Sharpie Sniffer" hoping to glean some insight, and assumed it was likely someone in their mid-to-late teens. Any earlier and you would not be into sniffing markers, any later and you would have moved on to proper narcotics to get your fix. This assumption happened to line up nicely with one of the two plausible date formats, the one ending in 1995. The 4 and 6 were of no interest to me but I later assumed them to be birth month and day.
It was a guess, based on a guess, based on a set of assumptions. Nothing in the rule set banned the analysis of this publicly available data or operating on assumptions. As the rules are written, the only possible way to cheat in this contest would be to change your answer after the fact, and that is something I did not do. It was a guess, a scientific wild *** guess maybe, but a guess all the same.
Hopefully this clears up the mystery. I'm totally blown away that it all came together.
As to why my first post was short, I didn't want to spend an hour-plus putting my thoughts together in a coherent way... I do not like to write if I am not going to write right.
Bravo good Sir, that's some serious detective work!
Senior Community Manager
Hey Sharpie, sometimes we say things that can have an effect that we don't foresee. That's a part of life.Originally Posted by SharpieSniffer
If you hold another contest, here or elsewhere, in the future, try to remember that you shouldn't have any feelings about who could win. It could be a buddy or your board nemesis.
If it were me, my reaction to grimm's guess would be to laugh like an idiot and ask how the hell he did it. It's an amazingly lucky guess. Instead you came out calling him a cheater and said that you "hate how it turned out".
I said that because I felt bad that I completely screwed up the win for someone else. It's not that I hate Grimm or like hardcore. I've never met them or talked to them before, ever. If Grimm was in hardcore's position I would have felt the same way. I called him a cheater because I couldn't figure out how he could of guessed it exactly and I didn't think it was possible to do it the way Grimm did. That part kind of pisses me off. I continued that accusation because when he wrote back he didn't defend himself at all and didn't give any explanation, which is what most people would do in that situation. That is partly his fault, but more mine. I'm never holding another contest after what happened here. I've already confirmed that he won and will receive his prize in full. If anyone else has a problem, please, say something. I don't think I should have to explain anymore.Originally Posted by ShiftySamurai
Sharpie squared-up with the points as advertised. It speaks well of his character that despite being personally angry with the results of the contest, he still followed through.
@Jook, Warlord, Pro, Bobo, Raist, Jarr, Mikko and Shifty:
Thank you all for the kind words.
Luck? I read your mind. That's what you get for walking around without a tinfoil hat...Originally Posted by SharpieSniffer
