Samuel, of "The Daily Dimwit" sent me the image of Leonardo de Vinci, the answer to the final clue, yesterday afternoon. After the bells and whistles stopped sounding, and the confetti was finished falling from the sky, I informed Sam that he had won the entire contents of my 2010 Topps Chrome box, plus he has chosen the Alex Rodriguez Dave Hobrecht personally signed Chicle card, plus I am going to do some searching for something special in the card pile.
I asked Sam to write an explanation of how he solved the code. Reviewing his work, it is apparent that he utilized technology to get the job done. Though the code is certainly solvable without heavy computer work (though very useful for the trivia section), there is definitely no reason not to use any resource you can!
I want to clarify one section of the puzzle, as Sam was able to interpret the PDF section of the puzzle, thus skipping the step before it! The email with the PDF included a code that explained what to do with the PDF. In order to solve that code, you needed to have each card from the trivia questions. There was no need to reorder them in any way, but to simply line them up, and using the names, start counting letters. Once you decipher them correctly you will read
"TRAVEL TO MUDVILLE! FIND FAMOUS POEM. START AT THE SNEER. SOME THINGS DO NOT BELONG…"
Thus you pull up the PDF, start at "the sneer" which is the 2nd to last stanza, and cross out every word up to the end of the poem!
ANYWAYS, congratulation to Sam! If you have any questions about the code, feel free to leave a comment and I will answer all!
