Emerald City Search time (or, ZOMG, $9000 in prizes!)

By popular demand, it's time for Emerald City Search tips.

But First, a Diversion

 

Of all the events I posted about last week, I actually did one, the Resurrection V Alleycat.  I ineptly shotgunned a PBR, ineptly did some cyclocross, had my picture taken with a disreputable rabbit, made a cross, ate a Last Supper, and ended up in 4th place.

Here's your chance to play along.  No bike riding required, but you don't get the free wine and saltines, either:  The starting line is Cal Anderson Park.  The finish line is Gasworks Park.  In between, you must visit Madrona Park (Lake Washington Blvd and Madrona Drive), South Lake Union Park (Westlake and Valley), Sunset Hill Park (34th NW and NW 75th), The Wedgwood Rock (28th NE and NE 72nd) and Woodland Park (Woodland Park Ave and N 50th).  Also, somewhere along the way you have to visit a cemetery and get a grave rubbing with the number '5'.  Figure out your best route.  You can pretend you are Lance Armstrong on the hills, but it'd probably be more realistic if your route didn't involve a climb straight west out of Madison Valley.

Back to...The Emerald City Search

 

If you want to win the ECS, it will help to become acquainted with its history.  The Emerald City Search (ECS) is a citywide treasure hunt with only one thing to find:  a 'medallion' that has been hidden 'in plain sight' on public property.  To help you find the medallion, a single clue is released every day for ten days, often in the form of a poem.  The clues usually start off giving next to no useful information, and get exponentially more revealing, until the last clue, which basically gives everything away (the medallion has always been found by clue #9).   The contest has a theme that governs, to some degree, the clues, the shape of the medallion, and the prize package, but you don't need to be an expert in the theme to decipher the clues.  I won the 2007 ECS, which had a Japanese art theme, while knowing next to nothing about Japanese art.

Probably the best way to prepare yourself for solving the ECS is to look at old clues (see the history page).  The clues from the first ECS are missing, but that's okay, because the first ECS was put on in 2006 by some people at the University of Washington, and they made a grave error by giving too much away too early.  Clue #1 read (in part):

If you add up the way of the seeker,
it's a simple two hundred and three.

This was a reference to the Hebrew numbering system (the theme was the Dead Sea Scrolls), which uses letters as numerals.  The medallion was hidden on a post on Alaskan Way, and if you add up the Hebrew equivalent of the letters in 'Alaskan', you get 203.  You may have thought, as the clue writers probably did, that it was unlikely anyone would figure this out and, even if they did, Alaskan Way was a big place and it was unlikely the medallion would be found quickly.  In fact, the winners did not figure this out (others did), but the second clue drew attention to decorations near salt water, the third clue said the medallion was within a mile of Pioneer Square, and the winners just walked up and down Alaskan Way and found the prize.

This was obviously a lesson to the clue writers; early clues in later hunts have been mostly useless -- they have given information in the first few clues, but it has either been negative ("it's not in a park") or related to something other than the medallion's location (the appearance of the medallion, for instance).  But it should also be a lesson to clue solvers.  First, there are a lot of people working on this contest, so if you figure something out, it's likely someone else will have figured it out as well (and others might just stumble on the right place a different way).   Second, the medallion has always (to my knowledge) been discovered in the end by a brute-force search of the right area.  Any visions that you will deduce the medallion's location like Sherlock Holmes and quickly scoop it up are unlikely to come true.

After 2006, Playmasons, a game and puzzle design company, was brought on, first to help write the clues, and eventually to create the entire contest, with the UW dropping out of the picture completely.  Another original sponsor, The Seattle Times, has also fallen by the wayside, which is probably for the best, as they demanded clues be released on their publishing schedule.  This meant new clues were released at around midnight, and the last few medallions were found at a time when some people do not feel safe being out and about.  This year, the clues will be released at 6am, roughly sunrise in late April.  OneReel, which puts on Bumbershoot and Teatro Zinzanni, is now the main sponsor, this year along with the Seattle Center (50 years old this year, but you already knew that, right?  It is the theme of the ECS).

Tips

The ECS website has a page of tips, some of which seem pretty good.  I've already covered 'Visit your hunches'.  'Check Twitter often' is the only new one; you should follow both @emeraldsearch and @Cluemeister, on the off-chance they give you better tips than #10, 'Have fun!'  Right now, the best way to prepare is to examine past clues.  Let's look at 2008, where the theme was 'The Year of the Frog':

Clue 1:

End here to play Seattle's annual quest,
Meet hidden red-legged frog in the west.
A stately species with more call than bark,
Naturally admired for its blushing heart.

Like many first clues, this one just tells you what the medallion will look like.  Except in 2009, this hasn't been very germane to finding the object, since, despite the claim that the medallion is 'hidden in plain sight', it has not just been sitting somewhere clearly visible.  2009 was an interesting and clever exception, as they constructed a medallion that was actually a miniature music disc, the same size as the metal plates the Seattle Department of Transportation puts on sidewalks as a placeholder for a signpost (most prevalent in areas where they used to have parking meters).  If you had figured that out, it probably would have helped you to find the medallion.  2009 was the only year where the first clue did not give a clue as to what the medallion looked like.  Instead, it indicated the medallion would not be found in a park (the first three had all been hidden in parks).

For reference, the first 3 medallions all looked something like the one I found, at least from the front:

The fourth medallion, as I indicated, was the shape of the SDOT metal plates.  The fifth was a miniature umbrella in a small tube.

[By the way, I believe the rules in 2009 also stated that employees of the Seattle Department of Transportation and their families were ineligible to win the prize, because at least one of them had to help them install the medallion in place of one of their plates.  That rule was a big hint, but this year the corresponding verbiage just references City of Seattle employees, so it's not as useful --- unless you're a City of Seattle employee or live with one, in which case it will save you a lot of time as you can just forget about looking in the first place and move on with your life.]

Getting back to clue #1, you'll note that the page states the 'answer' to this clue was 'cedar'.  It is usually helpful to think about clues this way:  the whole poem boils down to a single word or a short phrase.  The rest is just window dressing, red herrings (and occasionally) oblique hints [for example, an early clue in 2007 used the word 'benched', and I found the medallion under a bench.]  But trying to separate red herrings from oblique clues is next to impossible; it's good to write down unusual clue words that might be a hint, but not to fixate very strongly on them, as they can be completely unhelpful (for example:  'heart' in this clue).

Clues 2-4:  I'm going to skip over these, since they are largely useless.  The purported answers are 'water' (which narrows things down not at all), 'south of the Zoo' (ditto; it told you to stop looking around in the zoo, but they specifically said the medallion wasn't there, anyway), and 'Seattle Central Community College'.  The last one would obviously be helpful, but the solution is impossible to divine from the clue -- just read their ridiculous explanation.  And even if you did decide it was a college, there is no reason to choose SCCC over all the other colleges and universities in the city (all of which, save NSCC, are south of the zoo).

Here's my tip:  don't expect the clues on the first few days to lead you anywhere specific.  Relax.

Clue 5:

Settlers leapt in and trees fast fell,
Fragile landscape soon bid farewell.
Urban vigor was built to accommodate,
Once there were more, now two less than eight.

Now we're getting somewhere.  The answer here is 'hill', referencing the romantic fiction that Seattle was built on 7 hills (one of which was regraded away, leaving 6 = 8 - 2).  I believe a little later on I guessed this was a reference to reservoirs, of which we have something like 8, a couple of which had been lidded at the time.  The result is the same, as hills and reservoirs correspond pretty well.  Even if you solve this clue, it doesn't tell you enough to find the medallion, although it does narrow things down a bit.

Clue 6:

Crabs from the forest met three brothers,
Then pitched to the glow, one after the other.
Told from the totems of ancient descent,
Her tears of protection etch her torment.

This is quite a good clue, referencing a local Native legend relating to volcanoes and frogs. The answer is 'volcano', although it could be a few other things (such as 'lava' or 'mountain'). The hard part of this clue was finding the right Google search terms, but once you found one version of the legend, it wasn't too hard to determine this is what the clue was referencing.  This might be enough to get you to start searching around the volcano-like fountain in Cal Anderson Park.

Clue 7:

The yearn to discover may soon be quenched,
Structure your goal with respect to the French.
The bottom line is your right to reserve,
A soothing place to relax and conserve.

My rudimentary French told me the answer here is 'reservoir' (the webpage claims 'underground reservoir' but there's no indication of underground, unless you interpret 'bottom' very liberally).  Cal Anderson Park is really starting to look good.

Clue 8's solution was 'Olmstead brothers', after which a large number of people were searching the park.  But the medallion was well hidden in the rocks of the wading pool, below the old pumphouse.  It took until Clue 9 (whose solution was obviously 'Cal Anderson Park', but which also contained the bonus word 'pool') before the medallion was found.

I think I've spilled most of my secrets now.  If you find the medallion, buy me a beer or something.

But wait a minute, this doesn't start for over a week!

 

That's okay, there's still plenty of puzzling/hunting/contesting coming up.  I'll omit the descriptions for events I mentioned last week:

• April 14:  Cedar Grove's Big Dig Finals - Too late to find a Corey, but if you show up you can enter a drawing to dig in a big pile of compost for treasure along with the rest of us, like an organic gardening version of Long John Silver.
• April 20: The 420 Alleycat - Pier 62.  A bike race (alleycat)/fundraiser for the North America Cycle Courier Championships, with a theme related to the lowest law enforcement priority in the City of Seattle.
• April 20-22: Orienteering A-Meet - Whidbey Island and Snohomish
• April 21-May 1: Emerald City Search.  Sheesh, have you been paying attention at all?
• April 28: Columbia City Street Scramble
• April 28: U District Double-Header Alleycat/Scavenger Hunt + Sprint - Sounds like a triple-header to me, but whatever; I may cut out early from the Street Scramble and race in this one as well.
• May 3: First Thursday Adventure Run - Green Lake
• May 6: Orienteering (Score-O) - Shoreview Park, Shoreline (near Shoreline Community College).  'Score-O' is another way to say 'rogaine', so you'll be trying to find as many checkpoints as you can in a time limit.  I'll update this if I learn otherwise, but I believe you can start when you like (unlike a Street Scramble, where everyone starts at once).  There may also be a short preliminary course, whose checkpoints you have to visit in order; I believe this is done to space competitors apart and make it harder for a weak navigator to follow a strong one.
• May 12: Port Gamble Rogaine - 2, 4 or 6 hours, with bike, foot, or duathlon (half and half) options.  If you thought a Street Scramble was fun, and you'd like to do it in a wooded setting, try this (I'd suggest the 2-hour foot option if you're a beginner).  More adventurous than Columbia City, but not in the middle of nowhere, so you aren't going to get eaten by a bear.
• May 17: BEAST race #2 - Mukilteo, Lynnwood.  Mini-adventure race (foot and bike).

Update:  Patrick Nuss reminds me that the first Hood Hunt is on May 5, in Sunset Hill.  Hood Hunts are like Street Scrambles, except even lower key, with no entry fee, no map (print your own in advance) and no prizes.  Walk/run around for an hour looking for checkpoints, then meet up at a neighborhood pub/eatery.

Because maps of past Hood Hunts are all on the website, they're a great hunt to do on your own, say on a sunny weekend like this one that's coming up.  Just don't expect all the old checkpoints to necessarily still be around (particularly for the holiday events, which feature Christmas light displays and the like).