Thursday, June 7, 2012

Two Beginnings and an Ending

Obligatory Back to the Future pic

This week saw the start of two hunts and the end of another.  At stake: some books, a dozen emerald-studded objects, and a 1981 DeLorean.

Find some books, Seattle Teens

As promised, on June 1, the Seattle Public Library released details on its Teen Summer Reading Book Scavenger Hunt.  Basically, they are using a pre-existing website called bookcrossing.com to track the roughly 1000 books they have 'hidden' around the city.  You're supposed to be a teen to participate, so if you find a book with this label on the front cover
and you are not a teen, just put it back.

If you are a member of my vast teenage audience, go ahead and take it home, read it and 'release' it by putting it somewhere other teens are likely to find it.  Then post a note on BookCrossing giving a hint where you left it.  Unfortunately, BookCrossing's user interface is rather clunky for prospective seekers.  To find the hints, choose 'Traveling' from the 'Select Filters' dropdown in the right column of SPL's BookCrossing page.  Then look for books that have 2 or more journalers and read the latest journal entry.  Looks like there's no 'search nearby' function, so you have to look at journal entries until you find one near you.  A lot of them appear to be left in a library (c'mon Seattle teen readers, mix it up a bit!), but some have been left in cafes or stores as well.  I keep thinking someone will put one in a ziploc bag and hide it under a bench, but I think that's because I've been doing too much geocaching lately.

One of the titles hidden is Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.  Which is a great segue to new contest #2...

It's a New Car!  (Actually, an old car)


June 5th was the release date of the softcover edition of Ready Player One, a novel where video games play a central role, written by a guy who apparently shared some of the same obsessions of my youth (Atari 2600 games, Ghostbusters, Galaga) but hasn't quite let them go.  To celebrate/drum up interest in the book, Ernie unveiled a contest that will be played out over the summer.  Basically, there is a secret message in all print editions of the book (hardcover and softcover, so the message has actually been out there for almost a year), which leads to a series of 3 video games.  Be the first to conquer all three games, and you win a 1981 DeLorean which Cline bought on eBay recently (not to be confused with the 1982 geeked-out DeLorean Cline has been driving around for a while).  The car is claimed to be worth $25,000 (seems legit).

Should you rush out and buy the book/give up in despair because you didn't hear about this a few days ago?  Nope.  While the first game is out there waiting to be played and solved, the second won't be released until July 1st, and the third until August 1st.  So you have time.  In fact, if you're on the West Coast, you might have an advantage, since presumably it will be an all-out race on August 1st, and the game will actually be released at 12:01am EDT August 1st, a somewhat inconvenient time for some, but a good time (9pm) to start an all-night game party out here.  Order your half-racks of Jolt Cola now.

I bought the book on June 5th, mostly because the reviews seemed good and I knew at least my tween would enjoy it.  The coded message isn't that hard to find.  It took me only a few minutes of browsing the book to figure out what it probably was, and a few more minutes after I bought it to actually decipher it.  As for the game itself, it's an Atari 2600 game that doesn't seem to hard to solve.  "But wait," you might be saying, "my parents threw my 2600 out when I left it in the closet to go to college!"  Alternatively:  "The Atari 2600 is older than I am, grandpa.  Why would I have bought such an antiquated gaming system?"  Silly you.  2600 emulators are a dime a dozen.  You can play the game online as a Flash game (the 2600 had a whopping 4K of ROM and 128 bytes of RAM; your iPod remote is probably more powerful), or download it and play it on a standalone emulator (I use Stella for the Mac).

The game itself is like a low-resolution version of Impossible Mission, where you run around dodging robots and finding puzzle pieces.  Well, there's a deadly flasher involved as well.  But still, a familiar format, and probably one you can figure out pretty easily.  Tangent #1:  I spent one week at college playing Impossible Mission on my friend's Commodore 64 in lieu of actually studying for finals.  Tangent #2:  I'm always reminded of the evil scientist's cry of "Stay awhile... stay forever" when I pass the "Bothell:  For a day, or a lifetime" sign on Bothell Way.

Ernie Cline's book tour for Ready Player One stops at Elliott Bay Book Company on June 20th at 7pm.  Go ask him about the Jungian symbolism in Adventure.

Time runs out on The Clock without a Face (sorry)

Got no human grace

And speaking of books, the armchair puzzle book, The Clock Without a Face, was apparently solved about a week ago when the 12th 'number' on the clock face was found in Washington.  Washington, California, that is.  I'm sorry I had not heard of this contest before (there was a story on NPR a couple of years ago, but I missed it):  the book looks gorgeous, the puzzles look interesting, and it was all published by McSweeney's, so:  quality!

The object was to find the 12 'emerald-studded' numbers that make up the clock face (the actual numbers do not appear to be particularly valuable, so the joy was mostly in the solving).  Most/all of the numbers were hidden at highway rest stops, so the puzzles boiled down to figuring out a state, a highway, and a mileage marker.  Except the authors decided after a period of time to dig up the unfound numbers and give different clues (i.e., another puzzle).  The last number was left at General Delivery at a post office in a small town in California.  On a hunch, the finder e-mailed the hotel in town to ask about the fictional 'Roy Dodge' (the detective in the story), the hotel owner said they'd never had such a guest but, strangely enough, she was also the postmaster and a package had been sitting in the post office since last fall waiting for Roy Dodge to pick it up.  The rest is armchair puzzle book history.

Ongoing and Upcoming

Totally photoshopped, dude (see Geocache puzzle of the week, below)

Geocache puzzle of the week:  Where's This?  See the surreal picture above (an alternate view of the image in the puzzle).  Be amazed at how Google image search makes it possible to even come close to figuring it out without ever leaving your couch.  (Thanks to Grace Hensley for pointing me to this one.)
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