As you know, April 15 is the day tax returns must be filed for most Americans. What you may not know is that Forge of Empires has a tax system too! But it has the much nicer feature that it only offers refunds, and never any withholding.
To get your refund prize, however, you must correctly fill out and submit your paperwork. The FOE1040A form is shown below. To submit it, follow the instructions and write down the values for each line. When you are done, send all ten values in a private forum message to jaelis. Answers are due (of course) at xxxx PM EST on April 1xx . Only the first submission for each player will be used.
ATTENTION: Due to unforeseen circumstances, we are having to close the Contest early. The correct answer was shared in Guild Forums, etc and as such, the contest will be closed at this time 4/4 21:15 EDT. We apologize to those who took the time to play the contest as it was designed. (We also apologize to jaelis who took the time to design a really great contest.)
Prizes:
Each player who provides the correct answers for lines 1 through 9 will receive 100 diamonds. In addition, every player who correctly answers lines 1 through 10 will be entered into a random drawing for 1000 diamonds!
Rules:
You are not allowed to post answers or instructions for where to find an answer, since that will spoil the game for everyone. Any such posts will be deleted and the poster will be disqualified from the contest, no matter where on the forum the information is posted. Answers must be submitted by private message to jaelis: click this link to open a message.
FAQ:
Do I get diamonds on all my worlds? Your diamonds are shared between all your worlds, so they will be credited to your account and you can spend them where you like.
When will the diamonds be awarded? After April 15. We are impressed with the response, it may take a little while to work through all the answers. So just like with the IRS, please be patient
Will you tell me if I got it right or wrong? After the contest ends we will publish the correct answers.
How many messages can your mailbox hold? I don't know, I think that I may find out!
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Results and Explanation
We apologize again for ending the contest early. To explain, first here are the correct answers:
Line 1: 259 = 140 * 1.85
Line 2: 105
Line 3: 154 = 259 - 105
Line 4: 166 = 154*1.08 (rounded)
Line 5: 144 = 120*1.2
Line 6: 120
Line 7: 24 = 144 - 120
Line 8: 10 = 24 - 14
Line 9 : 17 = 166/10 (rounded)
Line 10: 500
The issue was line 1. A sextant is produced in a Clockmaker, and is worth 140 supplies. If you check in the game you will see that. However, many people looked it up on the Forge Wiki, which lists a value of 160. At first we thought perhaps this had been changed maliciously to disrupt the contest, but in fact it is an old error. It is actually noted in the comments section on the Wiki page, if you look carefully.
Because of this, only a few people got the answer right. Given this problem, along with the widespread answer-sharing many people reported, it seemed best to end the contest rather than allowing more people to be frustrated by it. This was certainly not anything deliberate in the contest design; our own guide on the forum does list the sextant correctly, and we didn't think to verify the wiki ahead of time. (Just to be clear: the wiki page is not run by or officially supported by InnoGames.)
I apologize for this situation, I'm sure many people will be disappointed. But we do have several winners who deserve genuine congratulations for getting lines 1-9 right:
Cokkan
Thyrgrym the bold
Kendaer
MasterGadget
Electric66
swimminspence
Meaghan the Magnificent
jkl51
stealing happy hours
bender619
Digby the Durable
RAVEN 201
Celtic Witch I
Theodora 289 the Mighty
Each of them will receive 100 diamonds. From those who also got line 10 correct, we randomly selected bender619 to win the 1000 diamond prize. Congratulations and well done!
Since we ended up giving out less diamonds than planned, I expect we will be able to run more contests in the future. Thanks very much to all who participated and I hope that the puzzle was a fun challenge, regardless.