Sorry, no. Nothing personal, but once you set the contributor level on the giveaway at creation it's not flexible. I usually like to mix it up between contributor and non-contributor giveaways, so hopefully in the future you'll have a chance to enter even if you're not able to contribute.
Welcome to the site, by the way. Enjoy your stay. :)
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Hmm, 5 hours and no solvers, considerably longer than any of my previous puzzles have gone unsolved. I didn't think I made this one unreasonably hard, but I've obviously got a different perspective on it as the creator than someone else with no idea what I'm thinking. If people are still stumped I'll start dropping some hints later tonight or tomorrow.
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Hints moved up to the OP. So far 6 people have encountered a pair of dead ends, about 20 have tried to look in a common spot and been thwarted, and no one's solved it. I'll start getting a little more explicit with the hints tomorrow if it continues to stump people.
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Really no clue where to start with this one, how about a hint on that? I read about these dead ends and a video, so somehow there are multiple URLs hidden in the text, that aren't in the format of steamgifts.com/giveaway/xxxxx. So I'm not sure what format I should be using, and if I should be looking at the meaning of the text or the characters that are used.
Basically, it doesn't look like any puzzles I've seen in my short time here, and I don't know what to look for :)
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Without giving away too much, I can tell you that the steamgifts.com/giveaway link is the final step, there are several different places you can start all of which should make the proper format clear if you've found them, and anything about the text in the OP could be (but is not necessarily) meaningful. Good luck!
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Prize(s): Secret, but you can probably figure it out by taking a careful look at my inventory (ignore the coupons).
Solution format: http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/X###x
Contrib level needed: $10
Ends: Friday (7/27), 5:00 PM Eastern time
I've been on the receiving end of a couple of incredibly nice gestures the last few days, one on here and another on a different forum. Random acts of generosity and kindness from relative strangers who went out of their way to do something nice, just because they could. It's enough to make your heart swell! I'd like to pass on that good feeling, so I've made a couple of private giveaways. However, I've hidden them behind a puzzle so that someone who's not in the proper spirit can't steal them.
Begin with an iamb
It might be as easy as pi
The cat won't point
...
Like someone else will
Yooks? Not them, silly
/This looks suspicious/
Quick to harM
friends beloW
9 and 60 pages it took
He grew almost 4
so like a PB&J
joined with the rest in the hullabaloO
Good luck!
Hints, because this is apparently turning out harder than I thought:
1) There is only one essential clue in the puzzle, and it's evidently pretty easy to overlook. There are quite a few other hints littered throughout that can help point you in the right direction, but it's entirely possible to solve it without them.
2) You may find a video that was originally intended as a joke and to inform you that you were looking in the wrong place. Upon further reflection, that video is also a fairly meaningful hint about where you should be looking.
3) There are 2 nearly identical images you might find while working on the puzzle, containing some information followed by a suggestion as to where you should continue your search. I recommend taking that suggestion very literally.
4) Clicky.
5) I did not make the minor mistake you might think I did. Well, probably not. I certainly won't dismiss the possibility that I made some mistakes, but there's one in particular that I did not make.
Solution
I used a name tag to put the giveaway code on the Grinch-inspired Spirit of Giving in my TF2 inventory. The one essential clue I mentioned in the hints was the very first line of the post - you could figure it out by taking a careful look at my inventory, even though my gift inventory had been set to private. What better way to figure out what the games were than by seeing them listed on the giveaway pages? :) I threw a second giveaway link in the text of the first one because while hiding the game was a necessary part of the puzzle, I didn't want someone to spend time on it and be disappointed to find that they already had the game. Fortunately, I don't think anybody who solved it had both.
Now, running down some of the other clues... the goofy text with the weird linebreaks pointed to Dr. Seuss, and the Grinch in particular. The first letter of each line formed a bit.ly link leading to an itstoohard puzzle. The last letter of each line did the same, with a slightly different bit.ly link.
The ITH puzzles were designed to be easy, and in fact one gave the answer to the other. Solving either gave you a link to one of a nearly identical pair of images that informed you that you had reached a dead end, but offered several clues: the Grinch's growing heart, a single word in the metadata of each image (orange or strange, the SoG being the only orange/strange quality item in my inventory), and the suggestion that you return to the beginning of the OP with a later hint advising you to take that suggestion very literally.
I also buried a textless link to nope.avi in the source code at the bottom of the OP. It was originally just a joke about how often the first thing people do when they see a puzzle is check the source, but I added a hint incorporating it to help point people unfamiliar with TF2 in the right direction.
And that should pretty much cover it. Thanks to everyone who participated, and congrats to the winners!
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