[quote=@Terminal]
The problem with the Bonus Challenges, and the reason I discontinued them, was because ultimately they had absolutely nothing to do with how good a written entry was. Your chances of winning any of those was down to pure happenstance. It did not encourage anybody to write in a specific way and it did not reward anybody who tried to experiment or think outside the box except for those who happened to think of the same arbitrary stuff I did (and only three of those categories happened to be stumbled across).

In essence, the Secret Bonus Categories were no better than lottery tickets (in this awful analogy, each submission counted as buying one).

The Riddles are a bit better (except for [@mdk]'s, which is laughable (Hi [@mdk]!)) since at least it's somewhat cerebral and presents a challenge for people to work out. But I would argue that they are altogether less engaging than the regular bonus categories were for basically the same reason the Secret Bonus Challenges were not engaging. Case in point: Calling it now that at least one person is going to solve a riddle without even trying to.
[/quote]

	I agree with Terminal here.  I don't know if I'm warping his opinion, but the challenge bonuses this time around reward people for solving a riddle instead of the actual entry.  Yes, of course you need to incorporate that "fear" into the entry, but if you break it down to the fundamental nature of this "bonus category", it really has nothing to do with how well your entry was written.  Honestly, I feel that it is a deterrent to trying a bonus category this time around.  While I do have guesses for "Glory", "Nyx", and "A Children's Fear" (I think it would sound better as A Fear of Children.  Having an indefinite article before a plural noun sounds very dissonant to me), I honestly will not go for them because I don't want to cram them into a story so that that it feels artificial and awkward.  I probably will only enter for "A Children's Fear" not because I know the answer, but only because what I [i]think[/i] the answer is happens to match what I wanted to write in the first place.

	Let me put it in a different way.  For the old bonus categories, I felt that they were like a compensatory reward that you could aim for if your entry did not happen to win.  I could choose one (or more) category and know that going in I had a chance to win one of these bonus categories, even if I don't win the "popular" vote.  Also, I felt that the old bonus categories gave another challenge that you had to incorporate different ideas into your story.  While the same does apply to the bonus category for this round, people who win the bonus challenge are actually being rewarded for surmounting an additional obstacle, namely solving a riddle.  You cannot even try to compete for the bonus challenge useless you solve the riddle correctly.  It is basically rewarding people for a skill that has nothing or little to do with a writing contest.