If you’ve always wanted to go sleuthing to solve mysteries, or perhaps rewrite history with your discoveries, then here’s your chance to get into the shoes of Robert Langdon. Google, in partnership with Sony Pictures, creator of the silverscreen rendition of Dan Brown’s bestselling (and controversial) The Da Vinci Code, has launched an online contest, The Da Vinci Code Quest on Google.

The online game involves players solving daily puzzles of various sorts, including six different challenges daily, at four different difficulty levels. In all, the game’s creators have managed to come up with 12,358 original puzzles (and they’re quite happy with the number they’ve arrived at—a Fibonnaci sequence, where each digit is the sum of the previous two added).

The contest started on the 17th, an shall end on May 21st, when the movie premieres. And what do you get with solving puzzles and clearing up mysteries along the way? Not only fulfillment, of course, but pitting your mind against the rest of the best around the world, you can have your chance at pretty cool prizes.

The grand prize winner will get a prize package with a total worth of about US$ 130,000. What’s in it:

• A first-class travel package to New York, Paris, Rome, and London—round trip, of course, for the winner and three friends.
• Four nights accommodations at each travel destination.
• Four Leisure Select travel accommodations from London to Paris via rail.
• A Sony 40-inch LCD high-definition-ready television set.
• A top-of-the-line Sony Vaio widescreen multimedia notebook computer.
• A Sony CyberShot DSC-N1 digital camera (with the large, touch-screen LCD).
• A Sony Platinum DVD dream audio-visual system.
• A Sony portable navigation system.
• A Sony digital photo printer.
• Four Sony Walkman portable digital music players.
• Four copies of day guides to the prize travel destinations.

And these are only for the US winner. The contest is also open to UK and Australian residents, whose respective winners are to receive a different set of prizes, which include a SonyEricsson (of course) mobile phone, an Xbox console and a PlayStation 2, both with the Da Vinci Code game (we wondered why Sony was giving away an Xbox!), and a Sony DVC handycam, among others. Ten thousand finalists will each get cool cryptex boxes (as seen in the movie and described in the book).

The contest’s interface basically starts with Google’s personalized homepage, at www.google.com/ig. Participants must have Google accounts (not necessarily Gmail).

Are you up for a challenge?