The recent Christmas giveaway from ASUS ROG has left everyone’s heads spinning just like they are trying to read ancient scripts. No kidding! That tweet was more or less like: ‘It’s Christmas time… 🎁 and along with it comes the giveaway of x1 ROG Xbox Ally for your gaming in the winter season ☃️❄️ How to get in? Just like find a word in the grid, tell us the one that shows up the most! The lucky one will be named on December 25🎅’ followed by a photo depicting the letter grid that looked like a word search puzzle constructed by an authentic gaming hardware fan. The search went off as quickly as that.
The excellent prize, of course, is the key reason for the whole thing. An ROG Xbox Ally. For people who are not very well acquainted with the hardware, that is a very nice and fancy piece of gear to be used for prolonged gaming during winter. The thing is, when the weather is too harsh outdoors and all you want is to stay covered in a blanket and play video games for almost half a day straight, that’s the moment! So, to win one absolutely free? That was a quick way to get and keep people’s attention.
Then came the humorous segment of the whole story. The guidelines indicated selecting the word that occurs the most. It appears to be simple, doesn’t it? One would consider so. Nevertheless, the comments area was transformed into a mix of a discussion club, a linguistic lecture, and a chaotic but entertaining situation.
The overwhelming majority of comments, and I really mean a huge number of them, pointed at the word ‘ALLY’ as the most frequent one. A lot of replies were just plainly stating ‘ALLY’ blossomed with different degrees of enthusiasm and along with emojis. The participation of users with nicknames like nicko, kakashi, Dave, and many others was great as they all joined in supporting the answer ‘ALLY’. One user, Misha, even mentioned ASUS ROG twice in her reply just to make sure they got it. It was like there was no question about it.
At that point though… The deep thinkers started to express their opinions accompanied by technicalities. A user going by the name of mr funny added a twist and a tinge of melodrama to the whole situation and claimed that ‘Ally’ is the most frequent noun but the two-letter words ‘All’ and ‘A’ actually show up more than once if you count every instance. He even posted a screenshot with the letters highlighted and in full detective mode. DwarfBayne backed this up by saying that ‘ALL’ is technically the word that appears the most but then he said jokingly, ‘that’s not on brand so I’m going to assume you guys want ‘ALLY’ as the answer lol.’ This is the kind of nit-picking that makes Twitter… intriguing.
Then there was darknessblade, who claimed the word ‘AL’ was present 17 times, which is a tremendous distortion, but here comes the respect, for he/she/they must have spent a considerable amount of time calculating it. Also, other less frequent replies came up with words like ‘Christmas, Ally, Gift’ from Treasure Hunter or just ‘christmas. Gift. Pro. Strix. Gamers.’ from Paresh. However, they were insignificant. The major conflict was between the Ally and All vs. A.
During the journey of solving, there was some light-hearted holiday spirit. Donnie Foust wrote, ‘Already got mine so good luck everyone and Marry Christmas.’ which is a perfect typo that we all should get into. Other people simply thanked ASUS for the opportunity and wished everyone luck. Gearsofwardaddy talked about his mother and expressed his gratitude like ‘thank you crossword puzzles with mom 😁’ which is really the most gentle thing coming out of a hardware giveaway.
The essential question is what the true answer is. Well, ASUS ROG has not made any clarifications so far. The winner will be revealed on Christmas Day, and at that time we will know if they preferred the obvious brand-heavy ‘ALLY’ or if they are going to be super literal and pick ‘A’. To tell the truth, it is a very clever way of keeping the engagement high. They transformed thousands of people into image detectives, debaters of linguistic issues, and product hype makers—all for the sake of a chance to win a free gadget. That is marketing genius.
To all participants, best of luck! The idea of one coming across an ROG Xbox Ally under the tree is a lovely thought indeed. For the rest of us, it was an engaging little brain teaser illustrating that gamers will dissect even the simplest matters, especially concerning freebies. We are just left with the waiting game until the 25th to find out who was right. Will it be Team Ally or Team All? I will not lie, the suspense is somewhat unbearable.
