2006 Google U.S. Puzzle Championship is Open
Fortran IV writes "Registration is open until June 15 for the 2006 Google U.S. Puzzle Championship, to be held Saturday, June 17, 2006—it's 25 or so mind-bending pencil-and-paper puzzles that you have 2-1/2 very short hours to solve. The USPC is a qualifying test to choose 2 members for the U.S. team at the 2006 World Puzzle Championship to be held in Borovets, Bulgaria in October. For a mild taste of the puzzles try the 2006 Practice Test (as has been noted here in the past, if you can't get the Practice Test open you should probably give the real thing a pass!) For more of a workout the real tests for 2005 and 2004 are still available."
Practice tests /.ed, .5KB/sec.
Note: Don't try to open the practice tests in IE/Firefox (with adobe reader), save to desktop.
I have done this for a couple years now. Being /.ed now is an annoyance, on puzzle day I couldn't get the password for over 20 minutes, then at the end, you can't submit your answers because everyone else was also trying. In a timed contest, this can really mess you up. Lets hope between now and the 17th they get their network issues resolved.
One of the more hardcore puzzling events each year is held at MIT. I competed in it this year and had a blast. For more info, go here http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/