The Lost Symbol: 1 of 33

A week before publication, Knoph Doubleday released an online promotional game called Symbol Quest for its soon to be published Dan Brown book, The Lost Symbol. If you answered all the questions right, which involved selecting a symbol to match a given clue, and you got all 33 symbols right without missing any, you heard the following recorded message:

"This is Dan Brown. Congratulations on playing Symbol Quest and reaching the 33rd degree with a perfect score. I’ve just finished signing 33 first editions of the lost symbol which are locked in the vault, waiting to be sent out to the 33 different winners. The 33 first winning code breakers who call the secret phone numbers, encrypted on the book jacket, will receive this reward. Good luck."

High resolution images of the front cover (and later the spine) had been available since earlier in the month, so a lot of people were starting to look for that phone number. Given what was available in the images, and presuming that the number was most likely in the block of numbers used by Random House (Knoph Doubleday's parent company)... 10 numbers were most likely.

I apologize to the seven or so employees who have real work extensions at one of these 10 numbers. I hope you have been able to change your number and for the week of annoying phone calls.

Turns out that the actual phone number was just answering with "Leave a message..." until late afternoon on September 14th. At 4:30 pm MDT I called the number which instructed all those that called to send an email to a randomhouse.com email address with "Robert Langdon's favorite symbol" as the subject and contact info as the body.

Then the wait...

Around October 2nd, first reports of people having received a signed book started appearing on Twitter... seemed that people closest to the Manhattan Offices of Random House were reporting first. I held my breath everyday I checked my box, but nothing. Then on October 5th, someone in the Midwest got theirs and I was sure that it was the day. Nothing. And nothing the next day (I live in New Mexico).

I had all but given up hope. It was the first Tuesday, Lodge night. I was getting ready to head over to the Lodge when a ring sounded on the doorbell. My wife answered and found the UPS package there... stiff yellow envelope... one of the seams had split and you could see the spine of The Lost Symbol through it. I ran around the house a little more than I'd like to admit.

Congratulations! You are 1 of 33 winners of Symbol Quest.

By the way... finishing Symbol Quest now, give you the following message:

"This is Dan Brown. Congratulations on completing the symbol quest, in reaching the 33rd degree with no errors. As you may have noticed the book jacket in the US is covered with symbols and icons. Encoded within them, are five hidden messages for you to find and decrypt. Best of luck and i hope you enjoyed the novel."

As far as I know, only 4 of the hidden messages have been discovered. Also if you call the phone number now, the message has changed to what can only be described as some sort of chant... speculations abound.