Book Cover The Prince and the Program

The Prince and the Program is available at brick-and-mortar bookstores, Google Books, Amazon, Dreamspinner Press and other e-retailers in both paperback and e-book formats.

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Rules and Regulations

The FIRST person to correctly solve the complete Golden Egg Codebreaking challenge wins the $1000 (USD) prize. 

While there are a number of Easter Eggs in "The Prince and the Program", the Golden Egg requires the use of the entire text of the novel. Other Easter Eggs can be submitted here for credit (and, possibly, other prizes).

In order to satisfy the correctness and completeness criteria for the Golden Egg, you must email me (mercer{at}technomance{dot}com) the following:
  1. The solved "hint" code given here
  2. The method by which you obtained the Cypher Key
  3. The plain-text data you obtained from the Cypher Key
  4. The final result - the Golden Egg plaintext, along with a short explanatory note as to how you solved it.
In case of ambiguity, please be prepared to submit the code/programs you used for each step of the codebreaking process, unless proprietary software is involved in which case I will accept pseudocode.

Employees of Dreamspinner Press are not eligible to win the award.

The winner must allow me to post their solution on the web, and include their name (nickname acceptable) in the Afterword for Book II of the Mordred Saga.