Source: Official U.S Playstation Magazine 29 (February 2000)
Scan source: RetroMags
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in reply to @gamemagprintads's post:
oh yes lol those word grid things are probably still out there, doing their thing
you have not won. you are not going to win. having you solve the puzzle first is just a way of making you feel special so you're more vulnerable to the sales pitch.
This was actually a legal loophole, as I understand it. Sweepstakes were broadly outlawed at one point as basically a form of gambling, just like private lotteries, but "games of skill" could still award prizes, so you just have to include some fairly trivial puzzle in front of your sweepstakes, and you're golden. This law is still on the books in Canada IIRC, but at one point it was in a decent portion of US states as well.
yeah, it definitely falls into that niche but most sweepstakes that are going for that have an extremely easy puzzle. these ones were fairly hard, so we feel like there's more going on. that said, we're speculating, of course.