Being a born risk taker and adventurer, I couldn’t pass up the change to register for a sweepstakes put on by Kelty, makers of my sleeping bag and tent, to win a trip to Iceland and a bunch of gear. Of course I won’t win anything but the occasional spam email, but let’s pretend it’s a bacon bit and call it even.

But for some unfathomable reason, I actually bothered to glance at the Official Rules of the contest. I am glad I did, because it has revealed another one of those tiny little loose ends in the world that hints that everything you think you know, may be a lie.

The first paragraph contains this interesting clause:

If a resident of Canada is selected as the winner, he or she will be required to correctly answer a mathematical skill testing question as a condition of receiving the prize.

The obvious reason for this requirement is that an ancient Icelandic prophesy once told that a man from “the West” i.e. Canada would win a great contest and be brought to Iceland, where he would solve a universal mystery that would ease the lives of all humanity. So this contest is rigged so only a Canadian will win, and then by winnowing away any mathematically inept winners, they will maximize the chances of finding the hero foretold in the prophesy.

That has got to be it. Or is there a global secret cabal that has rigged this contest so a certain subversive Canadian mathematician, now in hiding, who loves hiking, Björk and geysers will sign up for this sweepstakes, and pass the test, and thereby reveal himself?

Or possibly, and maybe most realistically, this is tied into Lost: the reveal being that anyone who is lying about something is disqualified, unless they have enough math skill to solve the Valenzetti equation, in which case they will be allowed to go to Iceland and - uh - find a polar bear. Which would be surprising, but not that surprising - maybe it would be a sort of warm-up for a trip to another certain island.

So that is it. Definitely one of those possibilities. Nothing else adds up.