Borders Books UK teams up with Google Earth, media partner the Daily Telegraph, and Walker Books to take Wally to his biggest game ever. (NOTE: Wally is known as “Where’s Waldo?” in North America.) Starting on Monday, November 3rd, the competition will be launched to find Wally in Google Earth.
The competition can be entered online only at borders.co.uk/whereswally. To win, fans will have to follow a series of daily clues to find Wally, hidden on Google Earth in seven different locations across the globe. The first daily clue will appear exclusively in the Daily Telegraph on Monday 3rd November and then a new clue will appear on borders.co.uk/whereswally each day for the following six days.
Anyone who finds Wally’s location on any individual day will be entered into a prize draw to win loads of Wally’s merchandise. Anyone who finds all seven secret locations on Google Earth will then need to enter all the longitude and latitude references on the Borders website to get to the final round. The winner, drawn at random, will win a fantastic holiday to Wally’s secret final destination.
The competition will run from 3rd-9th November only, so get those bobble hats on, don those red and white stripes, and start searching for Wally now.
See the full press release for more details.
It will be interesting to see how the search will be implemented. In past contests, KML network links were used to bring up “hidden” locations and puzzles at select times. The problem is that KML knowledgeable people can generally find the locations pretty easy this way. However, it is possible – if Google cooperates – to hide images in the base imagery of Google Earth. This would make the hunting a bit more challenging. Another way would be to include Wally inside 3D buildings as was done by one modeler seen here.
Related:
- Mazda CX-7 contest – had clues and hidden locations. Well done.
- Fiat Sedici Contest for Torino Olympics – This one just had you pick a spot which was randomly selected as the winner.
- Vancouver Artist Puts Waldo on a Roof
About Frank Taylor
Frank Taylor started the Google Earth Blog in July, 2005 shortly after Google Earth was first released. He has worked with 3D computer graphics and VR for many years and was very impressed with this exciting product. Frank completed a 5.5 year circumnavigation of the earth by sailboat in June 2015 which you can read about at Tahina Expedition, and is a licensed pilot, backpacker, diver, and photographer.
For your curiosity, in French (at least in Canada), “Where’s Waldo” is actually “Où est Charlie”! Cheers! 🙂
“Dónde está Wally?” in Argentina ?(i guess anywhere ppl speaks spanish)
hi this is really good information i like so totally love this website