The puzzle's solution required you to accomplish seven tasks.
1. You had to read the puzzle and believe the instructions included in the puzzle.
2. You had to figure out that it really is a simple, almost medieveal word puzzle.
3. You had to realize that the sentence and paragraph structures are so poorly done that although the answer is in the text, it is not hidden there in any deep, profound way. When I said it isn't hidden, I meant that. It isn't hidden. It is right there, right in plain sight, right in front of your eyes.
4. (The hard part, in my humble opinion) You had to read the text and say to yourself, "This is a bunch of convoluted nonsense! It doesn't mean much of anything! If it's here, and this jackass says it is, then this text must be just a way of presenting it. What could it be? If the sentences don't make any sense - and they obviously don't - maybe individual words mean something special. But the jackass says the answer isn't hidden in word meanings, or anything weird like that. No, it's something else."
Yes, it is something else; something very simple: each paragraph presents a word; each sentence presents a letter in that word; and that letter is the first letter in each sentence.
5. Once you got the initial answer, "Like a book by Michener about Tel Makor," you needed to either apply your knowledge of modern American literature, which would immediately inform you that this refers to The Source, or you needed to apply your ability to use a search engine like Google to discover this information.
Some of you got this far and triumphantly e-mailed me, claiming to have discovered the solution to the puzzle: The Source. Alas, no... The primary answer does not say, "A book by Michener about Tel Makor," i.e., The Source. It says, "Like a book by Michener about Tel Makor," i.e., like The Source. Since some of you got this far, but didn't manage to get to the actual solution, I added another clue to my home page: "What you View will tell you what you get and how you get it." The key element is "View," which is why I capitalized it for emphasis. This doesn't seem to have been of much assistance.
6. Next you had to be able to mentally switch gears and figure out what "View something like The Source" might mean. It seemed obvious to me that it couldn't possibly mean to actually look at the book, or at some randomly chosen book, because all books have their own designs - even different printings of a given novel like The Source look different, and merely looking at a book couldn't possibly solve the puzzle.
Important Explanation Directly Ahead! If you are easily irked, please stop reading now!
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Just about every web browser (Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator are the ones I'm most familiar with) has a command letting the user View the Source, or View the Page Source, or something like that. This page source is the actual raw html code used to tell the web browser how to present a web page on the computer's screen.
7. So when you figured out that you needed to View something like The Source, and then actually did so, you'd have seen the real solution to the puzzle, embedded in the raw html code.
It says, "Congratulations! You have arrived at the solution. Unfortunately, a fellow from Arkansas beat you to it and claimed the prize, a Silver Eagle coin. If you would still like to prove your success, send me e-mail at rsturge@inreach.com with the subject "Silver Eagle" and include your real name. Your name will be added to the Official Winners' List! Thank you for playing."
Now, it's up to you to refrain from claiming to have solved the puzzle if all you actually did was read this page!
I have had to ask myself a few difficult questions. Was this puzzle really fair? Was it as simple to solve as I had assumed it to be? Have I insulted my millions (or is it billions?) of faithful readers by inflicting this puzzle on them? Would I have been able to solve it, had someone else presented it to me?
I can't honestly say that I know the answers to any of the above questions. I do know that one person was able to solve the puzzle, and since I was only awarding one prize, that was enough.
Back to my home place.