Congratulations to Lyle Okata and Ed Boling!

Lyle managed to find a link to an archive post that I had completely forgotten about, in which Greg stated what the icon was intended to be used for and I have to go with that answer. (More on that in a moment.)

Ed was quick to figure out that the icon was representative of the appearance of an Extra Edition of a newspaper, with the "EXTRA" banner and horizontal lines to look like lines of text.

Congratulations to both! While Ed figured out the extra credit question before Lyle referenced the primary question, the focus was the primary question, so Lyle, please pick your prize from the 5 chips shown. After your selection, it will be Ed's turn to pick from the remaining 4 chips.

I thank all the players for taking a stab at this, and now my full and complete explanation of why I created the icon...

(Please note, this explanation is NOT intended to change or modify the current usage of the icon!)

The icon was created for usage in the Subject line of a post where the only content of the message was a link to news story. While the Subject line offered a teaser, the message only provided a link, as opposed to a brief re-write (synopsis) of the news item and then followed by a link to the news story or article if the reader wanted more details.

I infrequently would ever click a provided link because often times (especially back then) the provided link would NOT go to the specific story (often stopping at the newspaper's home page and requiring a sign-up or registration before going further). Also, (and especially now days) visiting the link produces junk pop-ups, advertising and perhaps even maliscious software.

I thought that it would be nice if posts with teaser Subject lines also included a brief message about the subject and in the absence of writing anything (i.e., only including a link) a reader could know this without opening the message because the icon would say, "Hey, the only thing you will find here is a link."

So, that was the genesis of the icon. Certainly different from it's evolution. But that's OK! Things change!

Congratulations again to the winners. My thanks to all the players and also to the prize pool donor! And my thanks to Greg for his friendship and what he gave all of us!

Jim