Have you seen the Golden Jigsaw? It’s an interesting new game launched just a couple of weeks ago by a company out of England called Infinite Ideation. (Don’t bother going to the corporate website, there’s nothing to see.)
Putting it simply, the Golden Jigsaw is a 1,000 piece online jigsaw puzzle. To complete the
picture, you first have to find the pieces, which are scattered all over the Internet on advertiser websites. The first player to successfully complete the puzzle will win $1,000,000.
The Golden Jigsaw is a brainchild of Julian Hanford. I had a phone conversation with him a couple of weeks ago to learn more about it. The idea came from watching his kids Bug"n"Lou (more about them later) working a jigsaw puzzle of their own. Julian thought, what if we sold pieces of a puzzle to advertisers, and then gave a big prize to the first person to find all the pieces?
Playing is simple. You register with the site and then download the puzzle to your desktop (it’s available for both PC and Mac). Clues are emailed to you (anagrams of advertiser websites). Unscramble the anagram and go to the site. The advertiser has a Golden Jigsaw logo on its homepage, which takes you to a page set up for the game. Some advertisers give the piece(s) right there, while others might give you a simple riddle for another page on their site.
It’s not really difficult, but it does have 1000 pieces (hey you have to work a LITTLE for $1,000,000!).
Julian’s plan is to release the clues slowly over the next 6-8 months. As of this date, they’ve given out 24 clues and have had over 150,000 players register. Julian says it brings back a taste of the old days when we all surfed the "Net.
They’ve also set up an interesting incentive for advertisers. The earlier you buy a puzzle piece, the cheaper it is. For example, the first ten pieces sold for a measly $120 each. When I last checked the price had gone up to $920 each. Ultimately, the last few pieces are priced to go for $11,760 each. Julian does plan to hold back a few at the end to give to charities.
As an advertiser, it makes sense to get in early, because no matter when you get in, you’ll still get the exact same number of hits on your site. If a million people register to play, every advertiser would theoretically get a minimum of 1,000,000 hits, no matter what you pay.
Julian has also found a pretty neat way to explain the game. His kids, Bug’n"Lou, do a great job showing you how to play:
Do YOU feel lucky?
Just had a conversation this morning how many hours we spend on the pc, wow, that would add to it! Great Marketing! Surprised Gene Simmons didn’t come up with something like that!
Those kids are so cute .. reason alone to check out the game. It does have a 1990s retro feel when people clicked for the fun of discovery. Now I do that with blogs and hardly ever with websites.
That’s an interesting comment, Toby. I’m the same way, but didn’t really think about it. I haven’t surfed the ‘Net in a while, but I do surf blogs. The Golden Jigsaw brought some that old time surfing back.