Comment by Confusion

  * If the statistical physics method used here is powerful
  enough to resolve P != NP, then there's a good chance it
  is powerful enough to have led to many smaller results
  before the author was able to nail the big one. It's a
  little weird we haven't heard anything about that earlier.

Well, Wiles didn't publish intermediate results either, partly because someone might have beat him to the final result with those intermediate results. It would also give away what he was working on. Deolalikar was aiming for the grand prize as well, so skipping the publishing of intermediate results doesn't seem strange to me.