Givaway is over, scroll down a bit for the solution.

Last year I made a promise and I spent a whole year counting down to it. So here we are, 1 year later and the giveaway is for Payday. I wanted to make a really complicated yet simple puzzle for this, but things didn't work out so here is an exponentially easier puzzle.

Here's what you need:

• A brain and some detective skills.
• A device that can read QR codes
• Portal 2

NOTE: PORTAL 2 IS REQUIRED FOR THIS PUZZLE

Good luck, giveaway ended July 20th 2012 at 8:30pm EST. This should be VERY EASY.

EDIT 1: Though things may seem obvious, there is some complexity to the puzzle. There is something hidden in this thread that is crucial for solving the puzzle, I suggest you find it first. For scanning the QR, try getting the portal gun out of the way and use the fizzler (it closes portals so you can get a better view of the QR.) You don't really need a screenshot of the QR, try to angle your camera so that the QR fits. For me, I physically stepped back from my screen and got the QR link.

Entries: 6

SOLUTIONS

Ok, I pretty much had instructions here in order. Many people were just loading up the map and scanning the QR code or taking all the cubes and placing them on all of the buttons then scanning the QR. Sadly, that skipped the entire puzzle. The map was simply a place to input your solution from something hidden.

1 - A brain and some detective skills.

Realizing that the QR wasn't reading and my hints saying there was something here in the OP that shouldn't be missed was supposed to be a clue to investigate the links. The first link is of an innocent picture of my promise, however if you look download the picture and check the properties you find a message in binary (now that I look at it, is seems the binary was stripped from the exif.) The question was "What is the answer to life the universe and everything?" in binary.

Other than that, you could have checked my profile to see numerous references to Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy such as my avatar and the Deep Thought Maze that I had, If you solved that maze, the puzzle would show 42 to be the answer. Or you could have simply looked through my screenshots to find 42.

2 - A device that can read QR codes

Here I just wanted to tell you that you need a QR reader.

3 - Portal 2

Once at the portal 2 map, you can see that a section of the map has a lot of flip plates and a hole to a basement level with two rows of 8 buttons and a bunch of companion cubes. Since putting on all the cubes didnt do anything, lets try something different. Binary code is composed of yes's and no's or on's and off's. Think of the buttons as binary and input your answer of 42 in binary. This requires only 3 cubes per row in these positions:

00110100 00110010

This would flip the necessary plates for the QR to work, and thus all you would need to do would be to scan it. Once scanned you'd find yourself at the giveaway.

Good job to those who solved it. Great detective work!