This is awesome. See if you can throw a wad of paper into a trashbin, while accounting for wind speed in the office. What a great time-waster!

Well, after a week of folks diving through the archives to look for the scavenger hunt item, I’m happy to finally reveal our big winner! But first, some fun facts:

1.) There are just over 2,000 strips in the Sheldon archives to search through to find the hidden image.

2.) We had roughly 260 people find the hidden image — which I think is pretty impressive.

3.) Among some of the methods used to find the hidden image, this qualifies for the “Easiest Possible Search Technique” Award. Sheldonista Dani W. found the hidden image by hitting the blue Random button underneath the strip…and “boink”, up came the scavenger-hunt item!

4.) Easily qualifying for the “Least Best Use of Lab Time, But Still Arguably An Inventive Use of Leisure Time” Award was Sheldonista Carlos Z., from Sao Paulo. He’s a software developer who works with computational vision and image processing, and wrote a small program to “check if a given strip had the square.”

5.) I had lots of folks e-mail me to say that, after they started searching, they got lost in actually *reading* the archives…and looked up five hours later not remembering what they were looking for. That’s awesome! My secret hope was that you’d have fun reading through the archives again — and a lot of you clearly did. Interestingly, lots of those folks ended up buying Sheldon Books this week. If it’s all right with you, I’ll take that as a compliment. You had fun readin’ the archives and wanted to read more — so thank you for that!

6.) I won’t (yet) reveal which strip holds the hidden image, as I know a half-dozen folks are still looking.

7.) And the winner is….ta-dum! Greg Schatzman! Greg, e-mail me to talk over your prize sketch!

8.) Greg, by the way, found the image 14 minutes after my blog post went live.

Over in the Sheldon Forums, Tovias left one of the nicest posts ever. Here’s his post:

I just want to thank Dave for having the contest. I got up early Monday morning (even though it was a day off) and saw the blog post and immediately started through the archives. Pretty soon I had forgotten the contest and was enjoying reading the comics. A little later my daughter woke up and joined me. We started reading the strips out loud. She would read the Arthur parts and I would read Gramp and Sheldon. Then my son came down and started reading the Sheldon parts. It turned out to be one of my best mornings with the kids and everyone had a blast.

A few readers have forwarded this to me over the past few months, so I should probably share it with you all.

Ladies and gentlemen: The Pug Monitor Cleaner

I just noticed that my buddy Greg has passed the 8-year mark with his comic “Real Life”. If you’re not familiar with the strip, here’s a recent favorite of mine.

If you’ve ever listened to three dance songs or dance remixes in a row…you’ll know exactly what Greg’s talking about.

Ran across this quote again, recently, and thought I’d share it…as it’s an ol’ favorite.

“It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.”

– Eleanor Roosevelt

Have you ever read this strip from the Sheldon archives?

Sheldonista Nolan B. did, and he sent me this e-mail afterward:

Hey Dave! My name is Nolan and I’m a big fan. I was looking through your archives and I noticed that Grandpa spent $1,300 on a Microwave in 1979. Check out the information I got from measuringworth.com: In 2002, $1,300.00 from 1973 is worth: $5,261.42 using the Consumer Price Index, $4,252.76 using the GDP deflator, $5,559.30 using the value of consumer bundle, $5,110.79 using the unskilled wage, $7,232.43 using the nominal GDP per capita, $9,843.41 using the relative share of GDP. [He spent] four to ten thousand dollars on a microwave!

Thing better have a rack…

Just for fun, we’re going to have a little contest all this week: a scavenger hunt! Somewhere in the Sheldon archives, I’ve hidden this image…

The first person to find it will get a free, personalized drawing of any Sheldon character(s) they want!

Here’s how to play:

1.) Search the Sheldon archives to find the red square, seen above. The square will be located inside an actual strip. Specifically, in one of the daily, black-and-white, Monday-Saturday strips.

2.) Once you’ve found it, drop me a line to tell me the date of the mystery strip!

3.) IMPORTANT! Don’t say or share the date publicly in the forum…just e-mail me. I want to keep it fun for everyone else who hasn’t found it yet.

4.) I’ll announce the winner on or just after Monday, Nov. 19th. And of course, I’ll be sure to show a picture of their prize illustration shortly after that!

THE PRIZE: Will be a one-foot-by-one-foot illusration, drawn on acid-free Bristol vellum paper, using archival, lightfast inks. You can be assured it’s gonna be rad, and will be well worth the effort. (And remember: you’ll get to pick the characters and text you want in your drawing!)

Ladies and gentlemen…start your engines! And remember, half the fun here is re-reading some of your favorites!

In light of this past favorite strip on 3rd-Stage Halloween Candy, San Diego Sheldonista Rodel A. sent me this shot of he and a friend loadin’ up. They were sad to report that the 1st-Stage Christmas Candy was not yet available.

Sheldonista Meredith F. sent in a funny observation about this strip.

“So, I was at my professor’s studio yesterday for a presentation. As we were wandering around the different studios, I noticed a box of Krispy Kremes sitting out. Of course, I started laughing and asked Mr. Behle if he knew where they came from. Apparently, the painter who works in that studio space eats donuts when he is frustrated. I told him about your comic. Now he’s addicted, too!”

Thanks, Meredith — it’s awesome to see the “Krispy Kreme” option is a viable one!