Our big game, The Amazing Race, wrapped up last night with the prize going to OddRachel. She decided to take the $50.00 instead of the 10,000 Entrecard credits. Congratulations.

So why is this a cautionary tale? Because the end of the race got upended by a technical mistake on our part. The way we had the final leg set up was that the answer to each clue would be the name of the html page the next clue was posted on. So there woud be no ambiguity regarding the answers. If you did not know the answer, you would never be able to type in the page. If you want to try your luck (just for fun) then you can check it out here. Amazing Race Final Leg. We were very confident that the final leg would be an exciting race.

Except we didn’t know that the indexes on the site were not protected. If you went to the folder where the clues were posted, you could see all the pages. All anyone needed to do was find the last page and go right to the end. That’s what Rachel did. People may have been doing it all along, as we would put the clues up ahead of time. But it doesn’t matter now. It was our mistake. Live and learn.

If you are planning on having a contest or a game or anything else, be sure to not get so caught up in the excitement that you forget something basic that ruins it. We are not bitter, and we are going to have another game coming up soon. We are not ashamed, even though it would be easy to say we deserved what we got because we were stupid (which we were). We are disappointed. Disappointed that the time and care we spent making the clues was wasted. Disappointed that the people who didn’t know about the index thing may have been eliminated in earlier legs by the people who did. Disappointed that we didn’t think of everything.

Next time, we will. And I hope a lot of people play.