Yes, a contest will produce a relatively small percentage of seriously interesting material. As long as the organizers are willing to spend the time wading through the “slush pile” looking for those few, that’s fine too. And if they don’t find anything good enough, I’m sure they have sense enough to shrug, award the prize, and then continue looking for something which does meet their needs… either contributed or commissioned.

If you aren’t sufficiently amused by the game, don’t play… but I don’t see any reason to attack it. It’s in no way a threat to the pros, or an exploitation of the amateurs. And the two groups do sometimes overlap.

Paraphrasing Walt Kelly’s characters: “Don’t take life so serious, son. It ain’t nohow permanent.”

Yes, you may enter individually. The restriction on “companies” entering doesn’t apply to the individuals employed by or who own those companies.

That is why the actual words in the rules are “midnight (one minute after 23:59) on May 31st, 2009″ in order to clarify that we mean 2400 on May 31 (end of the day), not 0000 (beginning of the day).

No matter how you plan to quibble about it, we’ll accept any entries submitted on May 31 (Pacific Daylight Time, which is UTC – 7). If you prefer, that’s 0700 June 1 UTC. Thank you, however, for leading me to note that we said “Standard” when we meant “Daylight.” I’ve fixed it.

What you’ve actually set it as is 2400, 30-May-2009; that is, while you *say* May 31st, entries may not actually be *submitted* on May 31st, as the deadline is past.

If you mean 2359 on 31-May (which is more sensible), that’s probably how you should phrase it — never set deadlines at midnight; this is why insurance companies don’t do it.

See you in Montreal!