+1

5% (if you're lucky) of passersby will stop to look at your flyer.

25% of those 5% might care.

1% of those 25% of 5% will know what to do with a private key.

My certainty of these statistics is at about an 80% confidence level, raising the absurdity of this idea by about 47%.

But in all seriousness, while an idea like this would be cool for us, you're going to likely end up wasting Bitcoins and time.  You'd be better off standing on the street handing out Casascius coins.

Not at all. I think it's cool but won't do anything with it.
BTW My avatar to the left already solves to a key...

I could see printing puzzles and on the back have instructions maybe.

The qqwing program is very good for solving and generating puzzles. You would want the --one-line option as it generates an 81 digit number.

The google project above has code to generate PDFs or SVG images in bulk. The SVG option is ideal as it uses a template and inserts the sudoku. So you could create a simple SVG graphic of the puzzle with instructions and then generate in bulk while storing the solved one-line seed in a file for creating the key/address and sending coins to it.

But also if you use the PDF output then it's just a conversion of the SVG. So by creating an SVG template you can get ready-to-print PDF output. Anyway, it's easy to adapt as all open source.

I wish my camera didn't suck the shit out of batteries

Anyway I made a poster that looks something like this



they can pull out 1 of the bitcoin paper wallets, ( neatly hidden in the crafty pouch , all they see is a piece of paper sticking out of the pouch with the bitcoin logo on it )
It has a bitcoin 101 intro how to redeem the PK on the back of each bitcoin

the paper wallets reads:

This is a good point, I'll definitely take it into account. On the other hand, I think it's fine if they realize that simply the coins are gone as someone has taken them already. No scratch-off stuff.

I agree that's a worst case scenario.  I'm just suggesting that handing someone a gift in person might be a better way of generating interest.  I like the generosity of the idea though, and I'd like to hear the results.  Try it.

I could see newspapers putting puzzles in them that when solved will award the prize to the first person who claims it. Or maybe as an advert for some business related to Bitcoin. But in that case I think the prize would need to be bigger than 10 cents.

If you saw a puzzle (sudoku, crossword etc) in an advert that said "Solve this, and do this to instantly claim your $100 prize". Would you bother? Given how pricey ads are the prize isn't much more and it could be an effective gimmick - but only if it relates to you business. Let's say you were trying to gain local publicity about a new international money transfer service.

By making it a puzzle/game you are enticing people into finding out what this stuff is about. Something they may normally just ignore as technical jargon becomes a game to figure out.

Allow me to be blunt: while it sounds cool, this idea is a waste of time and an example of old-fashioned reasoning.

This is year 2012, people.

Bitcoin is the exact kind of thing that can spread virally, like wildfire, without any marketing
campaign - provided that a killer app emerges and that it becomes a little bit more user-friendly.

At least just link to a pre-funded instawallet account or something.

Also, keep in mind that being pushy makes normal people think they're being scammed, especially when every bitcoin user stands to gain from increased adoption. It's like advocating gold.

Voorhees (at least) had the same idea a year (at least) ago.  Worked on it some but as far as I know it went nowhere.

I wanted to have two pools:

 1) distributed samples which were picked up and 'registered' by interested new users.

 2) funding pools by interested rich folk.

Basically things would be dynamic such that the samples (probably Instawallets) which ended up being active (which I suspected would be a small percentage) were funded over a period of time (but primarily on-demand when initial use was detected.) The main goal...or mine anyway...was to get people using Bitcoin a bit, transfering them around, and generally learning the ropes, and a big part of that was getting them to _good_ info and wouldn't be ripped off or taken advantage of by all the sharks in these waters.

A further refinement was that funders maintained their control of the funds (their portion of the funding pool) and could withdraw their support or add to it depending on their perception of the direction of the campaign.

I didn't expect the implementation would be terribly challenging, and it was important to me that the new user need not give up any info that was not necessary (which would be effectively zilch.)  This as opposed to registering a username and password to some system in order to claim funds or something.  There were some differences of opinion on some of these things.  More than anything though I came to the conclusion that Bitcoin was not right for most people at that time.  I still hold that opinion but my contention is weakening as time goes by.

This is a brilliant idea, but it could be a treasure hunt - the easy to find QR codes should draw people into something more involved. They could link to a website that provides a clue to the next location leading them closer to the bounty.
There could be a process that encourages people not only to search but also to contribute bitcoins and leave clues for others - it could expand beyond the campus and to the wider world..