Prize
The puzzle's inventor Christopher Monckton put up half the prize money himself, the other half being put up by underwriters in the London insurance market. According to Eternity's rules, possible solutions to the puzzle would be received by mail on September 21, 2000. If no correct solutions were opened, the mail for the next year would be kept until September 30, 2001, the process being repeated every year until 2003, after which no entries would be accepted.
Before marketing the puzzle, Monckton had thought that it would take at least three years before anyone could crack the puzzle. One estimate made at the time stated that the puzzle had 10500 possible attempts at a solution, and it would take longer than the lifetime of the Universe to calculate all of them even if you had a million computers.
Once solved, Monckton falsely claimed that the earlier-than-expected solution had forced him to sell his 67-room house to pay the prize. In 2006, he disclosed that the claim had been a PR stunt to boost sales over Christmas, that the house's sale was unrelated to the prize, and that he was going to sell it anyway.
Read more about this topic: Eternity Puzzle
Famous quotes containing the word prize:
“To a maiden true he’ll give his hand,
Hey lillie, ho lillie lallie,
To the king’s daughter o’ fair England,
To a prize that was won by a slain brother’s brand,
I’ the brave nights so early.”
—Unknown. Earl Brand (l. 67–71)
“The true runner comes to the finish and receives the prize and is crowned.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
“It is impossible to think of Howard Hughes without seeing the apparently bottomless gulf between what we say we want and what we do want, between what we officially admire and secretly desire, between, in the largest sense, the people we marry and the people we love. In a nation which increasingly appears to prize social virtues, Howard Hughes remains not merely antisocial but grandly, brilliantly, surpassingly, asocial. He is the last private man, the dream we no longer admit.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1934)