Does Facebook only want to recruit people who careful read the directions, even when they're unclear and scattered over several different pages? Maybe they do - maybe they can afford to - but they'll get a lot of false negative that way.

I read all the FAQ stuff beforehand, so I thought I was prepared. I didn't know that there were additional rules/instructions when the contest started, because no one told me there were. So the first thing I did was read all three puzzles and download the test data for them. I actually solved the third puzzle and submitted my solution inside six minutes anyway, but I ran out of time on the first one (still submitted my solution after six minutes), and I didn't even bother with the second one because their sloppily worded FAQ didn't make it clear that getting through the qualifier round was competitive and that I needed to complete all three to have a chance at advancing. Their wording wasn't technically incorrect, but it gave the impression that they were just trying to filter out people who couldn't solve a simple problem.

I am pretty sure I'm the kind of person they were trying to capture with this competition, and, well, they failed to capture me.