The puzzle team of Skavenger, BOLL, c0ld vengeance, and MorningStar have cooked up a new challenge for you. (It was first announced on our forum just before Christmas, although it doesn’t actually begin, for real, until January 15th.) It’s an email-based game for points and prizes; you sign up at the Yahoo Group halo_puzzles, and you get puzzles emailed to you. Send your answers back to win! (More details can be found at the site.) These guys know what they’re doing… give it a shot!

Interview news: in case you missed it, the call for interview questions (that we posted in good faith yesterday) was a load of hogwash; they’d never gotten any permission from anyone at Bungie to do anything LIKE what they said they were planning. I guess the ploy worked, however, insofar as they were probably looking for site hits, and that’s just what they got. (The forum thread we linked to no longer exists.) On the REAL interview front, however, TeamXbox has put up a request for questions for Frank O’Connor, formerly of Official Xbox Magazine (with ties to TXB), now with Bungie… and this one is legit. Go ahead, fill out the form on that page with your question. These will really GET to Frank. Update: For those who run across this news post and miss our followup – XBA’s motives were unfairly called into question here; the situation (explained in the followup forum thread on XBA’s forums) was far less cynical than I made it out to be.

Wonga. Ed Fries, Microsoft’s VP of Game Publishing, and a huge Xbox promoter (and Halo advocate) from the very start, resigned today. What will this mean for Microsoft in general, and Bungie in specific, in the future? Too soon to tell… Thanks to Lophan for sending in the Bloomberg update. (I couldn’t find a web version at Bloomberg’s site, so here’s a story at TeamXbox.com.

A note came in last week, just in time for me to read before leaving for San Francisco. I’d hoped it would make it into the next Miscellaneous Art update, which (I’d also hoped) would be coming soon. Well, it can STILL make it into the update, but that update isn’t coming right away, and this picture is pretty slick, so I’m putting it up now. The note came from Ryan Sellers, whose wife Heather painted this life-size Master Chief (well over 6 feet tall, 181k image) on a friend’s wall. Now THAT would be something interesting to wake up to!

Oh, my goodness. Somehow, I missed this the first time round, and so did everyone else here. Ouch. Blackstar put together a short (55 second, 6.7 mb) QuickTime MP4 vid using footage from a single cutscene in Halo and audio from The BBC’s version of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It works beautifully. Thanks to Narcogen, at Rampancy.net, for pointing it out.

And, of course, your daily dose of One One Se7en – today from rapture, who must be reading my email again.

Today we’ve got another Calvin and Halo for you – this one is Warbow’s, and it’s bringing back memories…

Synide has put together a rambling, 6+ minute long film showing… well, lots of stuff. It’s called ‘WTF LAG‘, and even starts out showing a few clips explaining this expression in humorous fashion… but quickly moves on to gameplay tricks, funny situations, and downright awesome skillz on the battlefield. (There’s a 20 second segment where synide takes out two full jeeploads of enemies AND returns the flag, while under continuous attack from the other two members of the opposing team… and he does it alone.) Some of this will make you wonder why you’re watching it. Other chunks you’ll want to watch again. It’s huge (82 mb, for a 640×480 film; some segments are in 4-player splitscreen mode, so I didn’t feel comfortable shrinking it down), and as I said, it rambles… but if you’ve got the patience, it’s a lot of fun. Mythica’s hosting it, though if things get ugly we’ll toss up some other mirrors. (If you’ve got space, feel free to grab a copy and send us the link…) Update: That Weasel writes to say that not only has he mirrored this movie, but he’s made a 320×240 QT6 version of it (22.1 mb), and mirrored Blackstar’s Marvin movie. Check his HBO Mirror page for details. Update 2: Thanks to KP, who took time out from his busy schedule of waxing his legs to put up another mirror on his website.

Mad Cow pointed out a thread over on the Gearbox forums; Hellface made it clear, a couple of days ago, that the Halo Editing Kit is still a little ways away. On the plus side, the delay is due in part to some ‘huge new features’ in the app itself… Okay, I’m sitting on my hands again. I’ll be good.

24 pieces for you in today’s Fan Fiction update; that’s what happens when I skip a day or two.

• Life Workin for HBO, Part Seven, by Hunter_Killer
• All Roads Lead To Sol…Just Make Sure To Bypass Mars: Chapter 19, by S7N
• ODST Marching Cadence, by Helljumper
• Marooned Chapter 12, by Steve Ollett
• Return to the Ring : part1, by MasterCD
• Prologue – Jungle Raid, by Tyrian
• A Series of Wierd Events – Sequel, Part Three[STERFRYE], by Hunter_Killer
• A Series of Weird Events – Sequel, Part One[COLD BLOODED], by Hunter_Killer
• A Marine Named Peters: Get Ready, Get set, Reminisce!, by GLADIATRRR3000
• A Spartan’s Path – chapter 12, by Myth
• In My Mind, by Frensa Geran
• Aurora Squadron-Part 4, by RogueFox
• Return to the Ring2 : Some secrets revealed, by MasterCD
• Halo Poem/Rap, by Solidus
• Shadow Ops II: Chapter Ten, by Agent Shade
• War, by Cerebro
• Desecrating Providence (Prologue Part 1), by Marty
• Galaxy 07 – Part 8 – Family, by Jillybean
• Fall of friends, by Shadowrunner
• The Master Chief Chronicles, by The Guys At the xbox.com forums.
• On A Pale Horse: Rescue, by Silent Hunter
• Survival of the Fittest: The beginning, by MasterCD
• In Chaos and Despair: The 2nd Fall of Harvest, by Maraxus6
• Survival of the Fittest: All in a day’s work (for a Marine), by MasterCD

Note of warning – if an author makes himself completely and utterly unreachable to the admins of this site, they’re playing with fire; if we don’t need to reach you, no problem. If we do… well, it becomes your problem.

GLADIATRRR3000 has created a new Halo Flash animation – you can find it on his Freewebs site. (Comments can be found in this forum thread.)

Frankie has posted a pretty jaw-dropping article over at Bungie.net on the Nightmare Armor guys – including a very first look at the Helmet (with glowing lights!). Wonga. I’m trying to figure out how many of my children I’d need to sell for the $4000 they’re asking…

Sharp eyes on sirBoB – he noticed an entry called ‘Halo MM Boxed Set‘ on the Random House site. Due out September 2004, it’s likely all three Halo novels (price is about right for three mass-market paperbacks…), but we’ll know more when they post it.

Wolfy dropped off a note in our forum – Sector 7 is running a new version of its Halo Quiz; 45 questions about Halo. If you get stuck, there are a couple of answers (and hints to others) in the thread on our forum.

Devin Olsen has created another stop-motion movie using the Halo action figures; this one is called ‘Red Sucks, Blue Rules‘. It’s hosted by nukedude. It’s not very big – 1.6 mb, 37 seconds, in WMP9 format. Take a look!

nof points out that XboxAddict has been given the go-ahead to interview Bungie, and has decided to collect questions from the Xbox Addict forum members. They’re not accepting questions yet – but the final interview (25 questions) will be submitted by February 1, so they’ll have to start pretty soon. Keep an eye on the forum thread to know when to submit.

Chris Bryan has sent us a few more shots of his wearable MC suit – he’s hard at work on the main part of the body. Check out the details (scroll to the bottom of the page; images are added as they come in).

Halo GT has opened up an Online Members section of its clan. At the moment, membership is open only to Aquaduct users, since he has to play you first before you can be included – but once Aquaduct 2 comes out, it’s open to anyone. If you’re interested, swing by the site and join up!

Last year, we said goodbye to a good friend, Brian Morden. Recently, there was a guestbook set up so that people could discuss their memories of Brian. (He would have turned 20 on January 10, 2004.) If you’d like to contribute, simply follow the link! (Tirion, who pointed it out to us, also mentioned that you might want to pay attention to the possibly hard to see checkbox that makes the entry private; if you want others to be able to read your thoughts, be sure this isn’t checked.)

Battleground: Halo has posted a new article today; Banshee Ace discusses the ins and outs of Banshee flying. If you’re having trouble living through Banshee encounters, you might want to read this.