I haven’t written much recently, but it’s largely because there’s not much to say at this point!  There’s 54 days left before the Army Of Zero competition closes, and I know there’s a few of you who are pretty close to a solution.  So I’m not about to start giving out any more big hints, because it’s not fair on those participants who have put a lot of head-scratching into the puzzles to start chucking out big clue-grenades at this stage.

So just a couple of pointers for new readers. There are clues here in the blog, and on our Twitter account too (particularly in the tweets in our “clue week”, January 11th to January 15th).  That extra information might be useful, and might give you a nudge in the right direction, but you don’t actually need any of it: the puzzles are solvable with just what comes in the game box.

One you realise what the clues are leading up to, the final pieces should start to fall into place more easily.  This turns out to be the hardest part of the whole puzzle, but it’s well worth getting this figured out, because it’s key to the whole thing.  There’s a clue that relates to this amongst the clue posts here on the blog.

Just a quick heads-up for those not following us on Twitter… our Twitter messages include an Army Of Zero clue every day this week, just to help you along as the closing date for our prize competition approaches.  Anyone can see our Twitter messages at http://twitter.com/pointzerogames, but if you’re a Twitter user, please follow us @pointzerogames!

So there’s six months left until the closing date for the Army Of Zero prize competition -  30th April 2010.  Plenty of time yet to solve the riddle and send it into us for a chance to win £1000.

So far - as far as we know - no-one’s cracked the whole thing, but we are in touch with a number of enthusiasts, some via email, some on the web, and it’s very rewarding to see how you’re getting on.

The components that are proving to be the most awkward to people seem to be the three lower shields.  In addition, I haven’t heard from anyone who’s figured out the overall objective.  The various sub-puzzles are coming together quite nicely, but figuring out where it all leads to seems to be evading people so far.  If you can deduce that, it might just let you approach the remaining items from a different angle.

Do please remember when you submit your entry to include the competition entry card, which you’ll find in the box.

I mentioned in an earlier post that the flyer we’ve been giving out at various shows has a clue in it, and we’ve been asked about it by people who can’t make the events.  So here it is.

Click either side for a bigger version.

It’s true that there’s a clue here, but it’s not a crucial clue.  You certainly don’t need this to solve the puzzle: everything you need to solve Army Of Zero is in the box.  What you can divine from the flyer doesn’t do much more than confirm something that’s significant.

Gah, sorry to be mysterious. “Isn’t that bizarre? Aren’t you just going, ooo?”

Ciphers, codes, hidden messages and so on are close to my heart, as I’m sure you’ve already realised. Having spent quite a considerable time creating the puzzles in Army Of Zero, you might think I’d have had enough of them. Even now, though, I still come across clever stuff that I would like to make use of, if only I had the chance to publish it somewhere. My copy of Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hofstadter, for example, still gets flipped through occasionally. I still find some chapters hard work, but it’s great for just dipping into, particularly the cleverly-constructed chapters of dialogue, where Hofstadter is playing games with the reader. Chapter 4 is a case in point. Although on the face of it, it’s simply a conversation between two characters, the dialogue is constructed so as to conceal a message. Look closely, and you’ll see that the first letter of each paragraph spells out a message.

Such constructions are called acrostics. You can find examples in a surprising amount of literature, including such familiar sources as the Bible, Edgar Allan Poe and Lewis Carroll. Many acrostics, as in the Hofstadter example, use the initial letter of each paragraph to spell out the message. But there are alternative constructions as well. Often the first character of each sentence is used. (Lots of acrostic enthusiasts like hiding one letter per sentence rather than a letter per paragraph, because you can hide more letters this way.) Sometimes you might come across an acrostic which uses the last character of each sentence or paragraph, but these are more difficult to construct because the human mind finds it easier to think of words that start with a given character, rather than words that end with it.

Maybe you’re wondering why I’m bringing up the subject of acrostics at all. Are they relevant to solving Army Of Zero’s puzzles in some way? Kind of. Evasive answer, I know, I’m sorry.

All right, let me try to be a bit more helpful, hopefully without giving too much away.

Some of the puzzles are word puzzles, and for those puzzles, as you might expect, using particular letters (or groups of letters) from the game cards is the way to go. Obviously, a significant part of the trick is to uncover what – and where - those particular letters are. Rearranging the cards in an appropriate order should then be possible. (The number of ways in which you reorder the cards might surprise you!)

Oh dear, I hope I haven’t been too obtuse. Really, I’m just trying to give you a bit of a nudge in the right direction. Don’t worry if you get stuck. Everyone does, from time to time, but if you do, a good strategy might be to think about different ways you would set about hiding information in the card designs. Revealing the secrets of Army Of Zero is supposed to be somewhat challenging, but there are hints to be found, if you know where to look!

It was a thrill to meet so many of you at the UK Games Expo 2009 last weekend, thanks to everyone who stopped by the stand to say “hello”. We played a lot of games of Army Of Zero over the two days, and it was great seeing so many kids getting into it (and usually giving me a bit of a beating, it has to be said). There seemed to be a lot of dads there, intent on introducing their kids to gaming, and I think they appreciated that Army Of Zero offered the opportunity to do that.

Embarrassingly, when playing against adults, the dice seemed to be rolling in my favour most of the weekend! I’m going to have to get some loaded dice for the next event, so that I can butter up a few more punters.

Sales were pretty healthy, even so, although it took a last-minute rush of buyers on Sunday afternoon to totally convince me that it was worth it and to send me home with a spring in my step. That last-minute rush was unexpected, because from three o’clock it all seemed to be winding down. So a lesson for traders at other events - keep going until the end!

As far as the puzzle element of Army Of Zero goes, people seem to fall into two categories - either they’re flummoxed, or they totally get it. It was interesting to see a number of people have a couple of minutes with the cards and cotton onto some of the symbolism. In particular, the notches got sussed out by a few people, and one chap figured out the shield with the array of orange and blue dots. Another visitor picked up on the clue on the poster.

Our stand at UK Games Expo 2009

There was a further hint on the leaflets that we handed out, but probably that won’t make any sense until you’ve figured out part of the puzzle - it’s more like a confirmation that you’re on the right lines.

And finally I just want to say hello and thanks to Jason and Matthew from Dark House Games who were my neighbours for the weekend. They supply Bachmann Plasticville USA buildings for use in wargames, role-playing and so on - why not pay them a visit?

There’s exactly one year to go until the deadline for the Army Of Zero competition!  It sounds like a long time, doesn’t it?  But if the last 12 months are anything to go by, the time will rocket by and before long we’ll be selecting our winner and awarding the £1,000 prize.

We’ve been having a few people ask recently about the method that we’re going to use to pick a winner, so I thought I’d take the chance to write a blog post on the subject.  It’s potentially tricky to write this post, because although we have a set of criteria for making sure that we pick a winner fairly, stating those criteria would give the answers away.  So instead, I’m going for some general pointers.

First of all, apart from the closing date (30th April 2010), time isn’t a factor.  The first correct solution is not necessarily going to be the winner, and there’s no advantage to getting your solution in early.  A good solution sent to us this month (April 2009) will lose out to a very good solution sent to us in April 2010.

We’re looking for a single answer.  The answer is more than one word, but not enough to fill a postcard.

That said, the “better” solutions are going to indicate how the answer was reached.  It’s possible to get close to the final answer without solving all the puzzles.  If you guess, it’s even possible to get exactly the right answer without solving all the puzzles.  So we’ll be giving credit to contestants who explain where their answer came from.  We’ve got a checklist of all the puzzles, and we’ll be checking each entry against that list.

How many items are on the checklist?  Well, I’m not going to say exactly, partly because I don’t want to give anything away, and partly because a straight answer might actually be a bit confusing.  The number of puzzles in Army Of Zero depends on how you count them: they intersect a bit, you see.  If pushed, I normally tell people that there are “12 or 13″ puzzles to solve, but it’s possible to count them differently.  But you will get credit for any of the items on our checklist as long as they’re included in your competition entry, no matter how you classify or group them.