Congratulations to all of those who made it this far and good luck!

Also, please post a comment once you get to the page, whether or not you enter the giveaway itself, so that I may keep count of the solves.

Solutions (to be posted after the giveaway ends):

1. 9 - This one only had you do some link-hopping and searching. The encrypted message - which you were able to decrypt here - contained a bit.ly URL named "http://bit.ly/seekmeURLaZ8j3", which redirected you to an Imgur image. From there, you had to replace the Imgur URL with the "seek me" URL, namely aZ8j3, and see that you were redirected to the Reddit alien, which is a very recognizable figure and even if not, can be easily found with a Google search of the image (i.e., copy the URL of the image into Google images and have it to a matching search, several of the first results will state it's the Reddit alien). All you had to do then was to go on Reddit and remember the clue hidden in the Deus Ex: HR giveaway, namely that "I was the old man", and thus look up my username. HOWEVER, things don't end here: once you found my username, you'd only be able to see some relatively meaningless photos I posted and nothing hinting towards a number, so you had to click on my profile and see my listed posts there. That would have shown you a video I posted so that it would be caught in Reddit's spam filter and not show up in the immediate search results, but only on my profile page. The video was of "9", Shane Acker's short film which inspired Tim Burton's full-length movie. The first comment on that (and the only - mine) congratulated you for finding the answer, so there you were.

2. 3 - Decrypting this yielded something of a simple riddle: "I am the noblest of all, as good as all those below me together and holy in my entirety as well as through my parts. My light brings death to those on the battlefield and the mere utterance of my name pushes everyone to action. I build you in the most minute details you can claim as integral fragments and I delineate the very perception of your reality. I am the one through which you see and balance yourselves and you often praise me in poetry." This riddle pretty much contained a dozen hints towards the number 3: "the noblest of all", as Pythagoras considered it because its value was equal to the sum of all the natural elements preceding it (the only number for which it is true - "as good as all those below me together" - 0+1+2=3). The holiness was a religious symbol, as the number is present in several religions as a major symbol (the Holy Trinity among others, which is holy in its entirety, but also in its individual parts). The next phrase referred to the war legend that the third man to light a cigarette from the same match would be killed, because enemy snipers saw the light as the first man lit, aimed at the second, shot at the third. The fact that "3" pushes everyone to action hints at the universally known "1,2,3 - go!". The following phrase hinted at high school (and I emphasize high school for any geeks who'll rightfully point out it's not an accurate picture) physics/chemistry, where you learn atoms are made of protons, electrons and neutrons (and represent the basic unit of matter). The fact that it delineates the very perception of reality referred to our 3-D view of the physical world (again, this relates more to the high school - hence more common - perception of dimensional space). 3 is "the one through which you see and balance yourselves" because humans have three types of cone cells (and three types of cells for perceiving light - rods, cones and melanopsin-containing ganglion cells for the day-night cycle, but that wasn't really part of the hint) and three semicircular canals, which are essential for balance. Finally, the poetry hint was very direct, as the number is often present in poetry (as well as philosophy, for the lovers of Kant, Hegel and others, but I didn't really include that in the hint for good reason). The riddle was quite dense with references to it from various fields, so it wasn't THAT hard to get. This hint also contained the link to the website you needed to decode everything - hence my clues in the thread. It was embedded in a "T" that I picked out randomly, so it was very hard to notice by just staring at the code, but very easy once you looked at the SOURCE of the page and did a search for "http", as the address popped up immediately as unusual. I hinted repeatedly at this in the advice I was giving, don't know how many caught on.

3. W - The quote was an adaptation from one of my favourite philosophers, Wittgenstein. I replaced some of the exact words as I found it online (I've only read him in my mother language so far, which is Romanian) with synonyms and added hints to the required replacements in the quote itself. The original quote was this: "A man's thinking goes on within his consciousness in a seclusion in comparison with which any physical seclusion is an exhibition to public view." For anyone who didn't even need to look it up online to realize who I was hinting to, congratulations!

4. t - Fairly simple once you looked up the quote (a lyric from The Tiger Lillies - "Thousand Violins") and saw the amount of "t"s I included in that hint.

5. G - Guanine. In a fairly cheesy description (of it and DNA) I vomited in a couple of minutes because I was already too lazy to finish. It donates more hydrogen (through the N-1 and C-2 amino group) in its bond with cytosine than it receives (through the C-6 oxygen), hence the final hint that basically separated it from cytosine.

That was it, congratulations to all of those who participated and to the winner as well!