Emerald City Search 2012, Part 1 (or, I won!)

Woohoo!  Early on Thursday, April 26 (before 7am), I found the Emerald City Search Medallion for April 2012 at the Green Lake Fallout Shelter, shortly after the 6th clue was released.

Medallion with bonus key and super bonus rubber gasket

In addition to a prize package worth around $9000 (which our 8-person team will share), the key is one of two that will open a special mystery/art/prize box after the second ECS in October 2012 (the other key will be hidden with the October medallion).  That box will be put on display shortly somewhere on the Seattle Center grounds, I was told.  I'm not sure, though, if OneReel, the folks putting on the contest, even know what it will contain.  It's all part of generating suspense for hunt number 2.  Are you suspenseful yet?  Good.

[The rubber gasket was an additional extra-special-grand-prize.]

But how, I hear you ask, did you find this medallion?  Well, let me tell you in roughly chronological order.  (Cue  flashback music).

Preparation

First of all, I did win the ECS once before, in 2007.  So that helped, particularly with knowing how the hunt and clues were structured.  I even wrote up an insightful, cogent summary of tips I thought might help, and published it on one of the premier PuzzleHuntContest blogs on the Internet.

I followed EmeraldSearch and ClueMeister on Twitter, and Liked their Facebook pages.

I read an excellent book, The Future Remembered: The 1962 Seattle World's Fair and Its Legacy, then put it and a few other books about Century 21 on hold from the Seattle Public Library.  (In hindsight, only The Future Remembered proved useful, and I probably could have gotten the same information from the Internet).

I asked a number of friends to team up to try to win the contest, and ended up with 8 people on my team.  We communicated via Facebook group and Google group.

Then I went on vacation, since these things are never going to be solved on the first day, anyway.

Day 1:  Saturday, April 21

I hung out at Olvera Street in L.A., and later helped make lemonade from my dad's lemon tree.  Then I flew back to Seattle.  Meanwhile, there was a clue:

Wenner-Gren’s futuristic dream ride
Constructed a new mode of transit.
Others rushed to connect and bisect,
Leaving a mess to meet the Fair’s opening.

 It's clear this is talking about transportation.  In case you didn't know, during 1962 both I-5 and the 520 bridge were under construction, and together they helped create the 'Mercer Mess' we all know and loathe, so it's a safe bet that the 'answer' to this clue is 'freeway'.

Later in the hunt, we broadened this to 'highway', and briefly flirted with the idea of 'drawbridge' (due to 'connect' and 'opening').  All along, I was somewhat apprehensive that this was too easy; as I wrote in my earlier blog post, the clue authors have never before given positive information about the medallion's location in clue #1 (usually, they talk about what the medallion is made of).  But it turns out 'freeway' was the right answer.  As it turns out, the clue writers also 'broke the rules' in a few other ways in this contest.

Note:  All clues and explanations, including the ones that were never released, are available on the ECS website.

Day 2:  Sunday April 22

This is totally the answer to clue #2.  Except it isn't

Kids spun silly at the Gayway “Space Whirl.”
The Belgian Waffle House became a family favorite,
But on Gracie’s Show Street, the gates were closed,
Unless you were old enough to step up to the bar.

This wins the prize for the most mysterious clue.  At first, we guessed the answer was '21', due to the last two lines (which suggest the drinking age of 21).  Later, when Georgetown looked like a good bet, I suggested 'airport' was the answer (because it has both gates and a bar).  Near the end of the hunt, we decided it was really just a description of the famous Century 21 'man in space' logo (see above), which we deduced would show up on the medallion.  There's a circle, like the Space Whirl, and the globe kinda looks like a waffle, plus '21'.  

This allowed us to file this clue as a medallion description clue, and thus ignore it.  Which isn't a bad strategy for early clues in this hunt, by the way; because later clues give more information than earlier clues, it's better to ignore an early clue you can't explain than to try to assign it an importance that it doesn't have, (which can lead you in the wrong direction).

Day 3:  Monday, April 23

Boeing’s Spacearium “Journeyed To The Stars,”
And Cinerama created a benchmark in film,
Orienting 4½ million of us to the ends of the universe
Where materials like ZAMAK fashioned the future.

 Whenever you see an early clue describing, out of nowhere, a material that could be used to construct a medallion, you should probably suspect it is a medallion description clue.  Zamak is a zinc alloy, so we immediately decided this clue described the medallion, and we were right.  In addition, the words 'benchmark' and 'orient' made us think that, similar to 2009 when the medallion was disguised as a metal disc on the sidewalk, the medallion could be disguised as a benchmark (as in, a metal thingy embedded in the earth to mark a reference point):

The Platonic ideal of 'benchmark'

This turned out to be true, for the most part.  I was slightly worried because I thought all benchmarks were copper-colored, and Zamak looked more silver/gray to me, but shortly thereafter we found a silver/gray benchmark when searching near the Montlake Bridge (as well as a couple of copper-colored ones).  The main problem with our interpretation is that we spent the next few days looking on the ground, and the medallion was actually mounted five or so feet off the ground on a closed gate (per clue #2, which we didn't really solve).

One thing we did get right:  when the first clues did not seem to describe the medallion, we suspected that this was because knowing what the medallion looked like would be a key to finding it (as in 2009, when the medallion was not described until clue 6!).

Day 3 was the first day we went searching, near the Montlake Bridge.  This was more of a scouting expedition than an actual search, as there was no real reason to choose Montlake over any other place, other than it was near a freeway and it was likely to have a benchmark.

Day 4:  Tuesday, April 24

Carlson’s doodle bolstered Seattle,
Permanently linking Century 21’s inspiration.
The future of space topped even Elvis
When Glenn passed over Sputnik’s orbit.

A commenter on Facebook made a convincing argument that this clue was about the Museum of Flight, and it sounded good to us:  What was Century 21's inspiration?  The organizers may have claimed it was science, but it was really the Space Race that made science popular.  'The Future of Space' was the title of a talk that was given at the Museum of Flight the same day this clue was released (The Future of Space is mining asteroids, apparently; the World's Fair goers would probably have loved that).  And while John Glenn never actually got higher than Sputnik's orbit, it kinda looks like he did in the Museum of Flight's gallery of spaceships (Sputnik is the silvery ball in the right rear):

Not orbitally accurate

There are two problems with this line of thought.  First is, it seems way too easy (c'mon, Clue #3 even mentioned Boeing!).  More importantly, though, the Museum of Flight is not in the Seattle City Limits, as required in the rules.

But that gave us an idea.  Suppose the answer to clue #2 is 'airport'.  Then we have 'freeway', 'airport', 'Museum of Flight'.  Clearly the medallion is in Georgetown.  From there, and Clue 3's 'ends of the universe', we hypothesized that the medallion was located at the edge of Seattle (the end of the universe, at least for the medallion).  There are a few public places around Georgetown that intersect the city limits (see this map, or just Google 'Seattle', which gives you a nice outline of the city), including 3 places where they intersect Airport Way.  And one of our team members works at Boeing, in a building that straddles the city limits.  So on his lunch hour, he made a circuit of Boeing Field, checking all the possible places, most of which were at the side of busy roads in uninviting and uninteresting patches of unmowed grass.  Sorry, Patrick.

Later that day, we noticed the words 'passed over'.  Hmmm.  'Overpass'?  And the word 'linking' seems clumsy, too.  Light rail = Link, so maybe this was a reference to a place where there was a light rail overpass (like the one over I-5 south of Boeing Field, except it can't be that one, as it's not in Seattle).   On Tuesday nights I usually ride bikes around town with friends, so I hijacked the ride to check out this and some other possibilities.  If ECS had not been going on, I probably would have suggested we check out some cool place, like the fallout shelter in Green Lake I'd read about a few months ago, but ECS is serious business and the shelter could wait.  We went south.

First we checked out areas in South Lake Union near seaplane terminals ('airport' + 'Mercer Mess').  Apart from a rat trap, we found nothing.  Then we went to the Atlantic Street Park in the Rainier Valley, which is the only place we could find where 21st Ave (or Street) comes close to a freeway.  While I was looking at manhole covers, the other riders found a play structure that said 'Scavenger Hunt' on the side, along with a dozen or so objects you could find on the play structure.  We looked extra carefully in that park, but didn't find anything other than all the objects in the Scavenger Hunt.  Finally we biked over to SoDo and the Light Rail overpass that leads into Beacon Hill.  No luck their, either, although we did get soaking wet on the ride back and stayed up until midnight.  That would not be the first time.

Day 5: Wednesday, April 26

Our golden look back is reflected
By those who remembered the A-Y-P,
Formed on green grounds, like the Search itself,
Tread northwest to where you want to be.

Oh yeah, now we're getting somewhere.  I blithely ignored the first line, rationalizing that 'golden' was just a reference to the (probably goldish) benchmark/medallion, and 'reflected' just a play on the AYP pool that became Drumheller Fountain, which was called the Reflecting Pool.  Wait, it was actually called Geyser Basin?  Don't trouble me with facts.

'Tread northwest' and 'green grounds' seemed the most interesting parts of this clue, at least to some of us.  Walk northwest from the UW, find a park (green grounds).  Or maybe Green Lake.  Or maybe Green Lake Park.  And wait, the weird words in clue 4 ('bolster', 'top', 'link'), maybe they describe an arch - there's an arch just east of the Green Lake Community Center.  And one at Meridian Park, too.  And all these places and more are near I-5.

I did some exploring on the way to work.  The area near the arch looked very promising:  arch, freeway, plus a big grassy area (green grounds) between the playground and the Green Lake Bar and Grill (kind of seems like clue #2, if you twist your mind a bit).  But no benchmarks.  Lots of benches, but that didn't work out either.  On to that fallout shelter I mentioned earlier.  It's parklike, and next to the freeway, near the north end of the big overpass that forms the Park and Ride.  I searched the grass thoroughly, as well as the sidewalk and walkways up to the gates.  I remember looking at the gates, and noticing the big sign with all the graffiti.  But somehow I missed this:

Obviously just a lock or something, nothing to see here

After more fruitless searching in the Ravenna Boulevard median, I went to work.  Green Lake still looked good, and if you interpreted clue #1 as 'highway', the three bridges over Aurora in Woodland Park (Aurora bisects, the bridges connect) were promising as well, so other team members did some searching there today.  After work, I checked out the Meridian Park arch as well as some more of the Green Lake shore, until it started to thunder and I came home soaked.

I had pretty much given up searching for the day, until we saw a casual remark by a Facebook user that Elvis was 'the King'.  Wait a second, 'topped Elvis' = 'topped the King'.  Like an ace tops a king in cards.  Isn't 'bolster' a term in bridge?  Yes it is.  In fact, all the clunky words in clue 4 are used in bridge. We went back to searching, concentrating on bridges.  A team member in Magnolia said she'd check out the 2 big bridges NW of the Seattle Center (Magnolia and Ballard).  We realized 'tread northwest' could mean to check the NW walk of the bridge (tread = walk), which means it could be any bridge with a sidewalk.  'Freeway' still seemed strong, so I mapped out all the bridges over I-5 and 520 near my house (NE Seattle), bought a Coke and some Cheez-Its, and set out on a rainy night to check them out.

Sometime during this rainy night, I realized 'tread' is also a term related to stairs.   Maybe I should check out the NW staircases, too (all the drawbridges have them).  Tread is also used when talking about trails, and both the Fremont and Montlake bridges have trails leading NW from them (Fremont has 2, in fact).  I found benchmarks along the trails NW of both Fremont and Montlake, but not the benchmark I was looking for.  Still, the drawbridges were looking good, especially if you reinterpret clue #1 to emphasize 'connect' and 'opening'.  I went to bed at midnight promising to wake up at 6am for the next clue, since I thought we were very close.

Day 6:  Thursday, April 26

Opening day, Seattleites surveyed Horiuchi’s mural,
Modern Art abstractions and Northwest traditions.
On May 15th Stern’s violin and Lees’ vision
Broke new ground at the Opera House.

 Oh man, 'Opening day'!  It must be a drawbridge (this year's Opening Day is May 5, by the way, I saw the sign on the way home the previous night).  But which drawbridge?  I found a description of the Opera House concert referenced in the clue, but it didn't seem to be relevant.  But 'broke new ground' suggests a groundbreaking.  Was the groundbreaking for the Montlake Bridge on May 15?  I couldn't find the answer on Google, so I turned it around.  'May 15 groundbreaking Seattle' should tell me which, if any, of the drawbridges had a groundbreaking on May 15.

My Facebook message at 6:45am:

Holy cow! The groundbreaking ceremony for the fallout shelter (at the Weedin underpass under I-5) was May 15, 1962!

End of the universe. Green grounds (Green Lake). It fits.

After negotiating with my wife to make sure I could go, I rushed over to the Park and Ride, parked near the bomb shelter, and looked around.  No one else appeared to be in sight.  I headed for the gate first, hoping to find a plaque or something related to the groundbreaking, where I saw this:

Second look

Hmmm.  Says 'survey' and 'benchmark'.  That's promising.  No threat of fine or imprisonment if disturbed.  Let's see if it unscrews or something.  Nope.  Maybe there's something behind it.  Nothing I can find.  Maybe there are instructions, as there were on the metal disc in 2009.  I don't see any.  Maybe that's a phone number there, and if I call it, it will have instructions....  Hey, wait a minute.  2E0C1S2.  Okay, that's just ECS 2012 interleaved.  This is clearly the medallion, let's jiggle it some more.  There's a little bit of play.  I can always bend those clamps...

And then it popped off and fell to the ground, along with a key on a really long chain with instructions attached.  Plus the gasket.  Don't forget the gasket.

From 2007, I knew there was a phone number to call, so I called it first.  At the very least, you want to be kind to your fellow hunters and let them know ASAP that there's no sense in rushing around looking for something that's already been found.  After that, I texted the my wife and the only team member I was sure would be up at the ungodly hour of 7am, and returned home triumphant.

Lessons Learned

Just like in 2007, clues we were sure we had figured out, we didn't have figured out.  'Ends of the universe' wasn't meant to mean anything.  The answer to clue #4 was 'overpass', not 'bridge'.  Clue #2 referenced the locked gate, not the Century 21 logo (but the logo was on the medallion).

It really helps to think and re-think the clues, as we actually did have the correct answers to most of the clues at some point (just never all at the same time).  More importantly, you want to be able to quickly switch between clue interpretations when something better comes along.  Like when I was absolutely sure it was drawbridges early Thursday morning, until, whoops, 'freeway' 'bridge' works a lot better.

I have an amazing capacity for overlooking things hidden in plain sight.

The clue writers are willing to break their rules.  As I mentioned about clue 1, they gave away important information in the first clue (something I don't think has occurred since the first search, which the current clue writers were not a part of).  Also, I would say this is the first time that the clue was hidden at a remarkable spot related to the ECS theme.  In the past, it's been on a post, under a bench, behind some rocks, on the sidewalk, and in some ivy.  And while a couple of those places have been somewhat related to the theme of the search (the 'frog' medallion in a wading pool, the 'music' medallion in front of a record store), this time it was just sitting there at one of the few remaining Cold War relics in the city.  Previously, you could count on the medallion being somewhere almost aggressively mundane, but not anymore.

Upcoming events

You liked the Emerald City Search and can't wait until October to do it again?  Here are some ideas to tide you over.  (If you've read my earlier blog posts, you may note that I'm repeating some of these explanations.  Sorry about that.)

• April 28: Columbia City Street Scramble - Head down to Columbia City for this checkpoint race on foot or bike.  You could even take light rail and eat BBQ afterwards (or during, for that matter).  You get a map with 30+ checkpoints (each worth various points) and try to visit as many as you can in 90 minutes or 3 hours.  Technically, this is 'urban orienteering' and a 'rogaine' (in classic orienteering, you have to visit the checkpoints in order; in a rogaine you can visit as many as you like in any order you like).  But really, this is just a scavenger hunt in a cool neighborhood where your chances of getting truly lost are negligible.  Prize:  A ribbon and, we've been promised, something other than the chocolate bars they used to give out.  I think they even mentioned something about a contest.  Ooh, I like contests.  There are lots of categories to compete in, so don't think you have to be some uber-marathoner to win a prize.
• April 28: U District Double-Header Alleycat/Scavenger Hunt + Sprint - Sounds like a triple-header to me.  In case you don't know, Alleycats are unsanctioned bike races in city streets.  Curiously, the prizes are usually better for these things than actual pro bike races.  Get your Lance Armstrong on, but wear a helmet.  I will be booking it from the Street Scramble in Columbia City to make this on time.
• May 3: First Thursday Adventure Run - Road Runner Sports, Green Lake.  Run (or walk) to checkpoints in the neighborhood for an hour (they could use the fallout shelter, but I doubt it), get raffle tickets, drink a beer while waiting to see if one of your tickets is drawn.  Prize package of $3000 in merchandise and gift cards from Road Runner and the various checkpoint businesses (plus they always have an after-party at a local bar with another raffle worth about $500).  Pre-register to save time and to get the opportunity to buy a beer for $1 (you used to get a free beer before the Washington State Liquor Control Board stepped in).  Buy an event T-shirt for double raffle tickets for the rest of the year, as well as a free beer for every run.  Note:  I bought a shirt for the April run, and it promptly paid for itself as one of the extra tickets yielded a prize of a couple of restaurant gift cards.
• May 5: Hood Hunt - 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.
• May 6: Orienteering (Score-O) - Shoreview Park, Shoreline (near Shoreline Community College).  Orienteering is a classic sport involving running around the woods with a map and compass looking for checkpoints as quickly as you can.  Local meets are usually low-key, in parks that aren't all that wooded (this one will likely wander through the more-buildingy-than-woody Shoreline Community College campus in part).  Instructors are on hand to help you out, and there are courses for beginners up to experts, so don't be intimidated. '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.
• 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. - Hardcore adventure racing takes place in the middle of nowhere, where you run around for a bit, ride a mountain bike for a bit, and paddle a kayak or something.  I don't do that.  But I am willing to run around a bit and ride my bike in the wilds of suburban Seattle, which is what a BEAST race is (Barebones Evening Adventure Something Something). Also, to make up for the lack of paddling, there's usually a random extra 'challenge' in the middle of the course on the order of croquet, disc golf, or doing a Winnie the Pooh 30-piece puzzle (harder than you might think after you've biked 10 miles).  Prizes are minimal to non-existent.  Teams encouraged.  If you're never done orienteering, I would not start here; the chances you end up exhausted on some gravel trail in the dark are non-trivial.
• May 19: Seattle Challenge Urban Adventure Race - It's the start (I think) of the Urban Adventure Race season, a series of scavenger hunts/races that are obviously inspired at least somewhat by The Amazing Race.  These are usually too expensive for me to enter, but this one has a nice deal going where the entry fees are $30 instead of $50.  As I understand it, you run around, solve puzzles, possibly perform a humiliating activity or two.  Not Fear Factor humiliating, more like 'eat a chocolate-covered grasshopper' humiliating.  Don't like grasshoppers?  Make your teammate do it. Prizes are usually not insubstantial.
• May 23: Evening Orienteering - Robinswood Park, Bellevue.  Did you notice how long the daylight lasts these days?  The Eastside orienteering club, Sammammish Orienteering Club, takes advantage of this with evening courses at Eastside parks.  There's a free meal afterward, so you don't even have to resort to eating at TGIFridays afterwards (the free meal is better as well).
• May 26: Gig Harbor Street Scramble - Unlike most other Street Scrambles, this one is free.  Something about how Gig Harbor is trying to help their citizens lead healthier lives.  You might be dubious that having Seattleites travel to Gig Harbor to do a scavenger hunt will lead to Gig Harborites (Gigites?  Gig Harboridians?) exercising more, but then you find yourself buying lunch in downtown Gig Harbor and their secret plan is revealed.  Really, though, it's a nice little town, and the weather usually cooperates.  Tip:  only climb the hill up out of the Harbor once, unless you're some kind of masochist.

Also, try geocaching.  I'm going to do that one of these days myself.  Really, I swear.

The Big Dig recap (or, How Far Will You Go?)

Is it the Hunting, or the Winning? 

My wife asked me that question, during the first phase of Cedar Grove Compost's Big Dig contest, after a particularly frustrating and unsuccessful attempt to find one of the Coreys that were hidden about town.  I claimed it was the hunting, not totally believing it myself, until I went back later in the day, found what I was looking for, and got a little rush of adrenaline.  Maybe it was the hunting after all.

I finally cornered Corey down in Rainier Beach

Maybe it's different for you, but one key to having a good time in PuzzleHuntContests is knowing which is more important to you, hunting or winning, and using that to help decide how much of your time and effort you're willing to commit to a contest.  The Big Dig is a good illustration, particularly because it had two different phases with two different equations to consider (assuming you made it to phase 2).

Phase 1:  Find Coreys, get to Phase 2

Briefly, there were 30 Coreys (mini posters with a picture of the cartoon apple core, above) hidden around the Seattle area.  To find them, you had to solve (for the most part not very hard) clues to their locations, go to the locations, note  the 4-digit code on the poster, then tell Cedar Grove you found the Corey.  Finding at least one Corey got you a coupon for a free bag of compost (whee!), but each Corey you found also put your name in the pool for a chance to compete in Phase 2, where you got to dig in a big pile of compost for the chance to win a share of $6000 in prizes.  The largest prize was a $3000 yard makeover, so you could safely assume there were other prizes to be won as well.  Twenty people in all would be entered in phase 2.

So, assuming you found out about this contest (and hey, I told you about it, so let's assume you did), the first question is, do you even bother doing the bare minimum:  find 1 Corey, get a free bag of compost?  One of the clues was clearly 1 block away from my workplace, and I could always use compost, so, that answer was easy for me.  Let's move on.

Phase 2, in a nutshell

Next question:  Do you want to dig in compost to win a prize?  Well, for me, the grand prize sounded good, but I know I'm actually not very good at finding hidden things (yes, I found a Canlis menu, but I  stumbled around the location where I knew the menu was for a good ten minutes before noticing it sitting there in plain sight).  If you're unsure at a time like this, it's good to do a little more research.  Luckily, Cedar Grove kindly supplied us with the rules for the contest which clearly indicated that more than one prize would be hidden in the big pile of compost.  Given that the only prize mentioned only covers half the total prize value, you can probably safely assume there are at least 5-10 prizes, at which case you might go out on a limb and assume everyone who digs gets a prize.  This did indeed turn out to be the case, but even if it didn't, it was clear you had a better than a one in 20 chance of winning something.

So, assuming you think this is worth your time, what was the best way to insure you moved on to phase 2?  The clues were released on March 26, and drawings for spots in Phase 2 started on April 2, so the best strategy was to find as many Coreys as possible before April 2, since (a) that would give you more chances for your name to be drawn (b) that would insure all those chances were there for every drawing and (c) maybe early on there would be fewer people participating, so your chances would be even higher.  For the most part, the clues weren't that hard, and there was a weekend to drive/bike around looking for clues, so I ended up finding 28 of the 30 Coreys before April 2nd.  I also knew where the 29th Corey was, but it was in a business that was closed on the weekends.  I went there bright and early on April 2nd, but it turned out I needn't have bothered, since they drew my name as I was in the process of finding it.

Yeah, this behavior seems somewhat fanatical, but, like I said at the top, I like the hunt, and finding the Coreys was pretty fun.  Some were so easy you could just slow down and read them from your car.  Some you had to go inside a business and ask (one place downtown made me ask 3 times).  A couple required some detective work, including the one I was frustrated about (they wanted you to go to the children's garden in Judkins Park, but there is no such thing.  But a Google search mentioned a children's garden somewhere near the nearby Northwest African American Museum, and it was a little thrill when my kids and I found the garden and the Corey).  In short, I had a good time.  But perhaps if you like winning more than hunting, maybe you should just have found 5 or 6 Coreys  and let it go at that.

Phase 2:  Keep the box, or Dig Some More

A few days before Phase 2 and the digging, they sent the diggers some more rules, which made it clear that, indeed, everyone would win a prize and, for that matter, you didn't even have to dig (they had teenagers standing by as 'designated diggers').  At the actual event, they disclosed another wrinkle:  if you found a box in the compost (you were actually digging for little metal chests with the name of your prize inside), you could throw the box back on the pile if you didn't like the prize.

This made the digging very interesting, as now you had a number of choices to make on the fly:  Do you take a prize someone else rejected?  If you find a prize on your own, do you take it, or throw it back?  They had five of us digging at a time, initially in 1-minute long rounds, so by the time your second turn came around, there were a few prizes sitting on the pile that others had rejected.

There was a list of the prizes available when you registered, and some of them were clearly more desirable than others.  I looked them over, and decided there was no way I needed a push mower or a garden decoration (I have forgotten the exact garden decoration, but this was one of the first prizes found and it was unclaimed to the end).  There were also 4 prizes that were 2 cubic yards of compost, which clearly is a mixed blessing for most people; these were also unclaimed until the end.

Some people were happy with what they got; I believe the first prize found was a gift certificate for a restaurant, which the woman who found it gladly kept.  On my third round of digging, I was considering taking a gift card at City People's Hardware, which someone else had rejected, but decided to wait until the end of my digging time in case I found something better.  Luckily, I found the first of the special gold boxes, which held one of the top 4 prizes.  After getting an okay from my wife, I kept it and bowed out. Roll the tape:  

After colliding with my shovel, this box is destined for the scrap heap

Once I was done, I watched to see what others would do.  Some people found a prize they liked, although I don't remember anyone taking a prize someone else rejected.  Some people were clearly hoping to win the grand prize, and stayed in it to the end.  Not surprisingly, the grand prize was buried the deepest, so it was one of the last ones found, and those who stayed in could reasonably assume that as more people took a prize and stopped digging, their chances of winning the big prize went up.  After the big prize was found, the digging was cut short and the remaining prizes were assigned at random to whoever remained, so it was a calculated gamble that paid off for one person.  As for the rest of them: several somebodies had to end up with 2 yards of compost.

There was obviously a lot of luck involved, but I think it helps to come in to a contest like this knowing what you want to do:  have fun digging up a prize, or have fun winning a prize you like.  If the prize you get is important, know what's acceptable to you and what isn't.  If I hadn't found the golden box, I probably would have taken that City People's gift card.  I met a digger who lives on a houseboat and won two hanging baskets and a bag of potting soil.  I probably would have thrown that one back on the pile if I had found it, but she told me it was perfect for her.

More coverage of The Big Dig at the Seattle Times, plus a bonus video:

Upcoming events, lazy edition.  I'm going to Disneyland tomorrow, so cut me some slack

(I omit explanations for events I've mentioned in the past; see previous blog postings if you want more details).

• April 20: The 420 Alleycat - Pier 62.  
• April 20-22: Orienteering A-Meet - Whidbey Island and Snohomish
• April 21: Emerald City Search, Scramble Edition - Seattle Center, 2pm.  Solve 10 clues, run around Seattle Center (in 1 hour, so the clues can't be that hard).  First prize:  2 Platinum Passes at Bumbershoot.  Second prize:  a set of steak knives (not really).  I'm out of town, but if I were in town, I'd attend this, so if anyone actually competes, let me know how it goes.
• April 21-May 1: Emerald City Search.  
• April 28: Columbia City Street Scramble
• April 28: U District Double-Header Alleycat/Scavenger Hunt + Sprint 
• May 3: First Thursday Adventure Run - Green Lake
• May 5: Hood Hunt - 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.
• May 6: Orienteering (Score-O) - Shoreview Park, Shoreline (near Shoreline Community College).  
• May 12: Port Gamble Rogaine
• May 17: BEAST race #2 - Mukilteo, Lynnwood. 
• May 26: Gig Harbor Street Scramble - Unlike most other Street Scrambles, this one is free.  Something about how Gig Harbor is trying to help their citizens lead healthier lives.  You might be dubious that having Seattleites travel to Gig Harbor to do a scavenger hunt will lead to Gig Harborites (Gigites?  Gig Harboridians?) exercising more, but then you find yourself buying lunch in downtown Gig Harbor and their secret plan is revealed.  Really, though, it's a nice little town, and the weather usually cooperates.  Tip:  only climb the hill up out of the Harbor once, unless you're some kind of masochist.

I mentioned this last week, but it was a late addition, so I'll reuse it as my 'anytime' suggestion:

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).

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).

Puzzles and Hunts and Contests, Oh My! (or, An Introduction)

In which I reveal my background as a theoretical computer scientist by defining my terms

 

Welcome to my blog about Puzzles, Hunts and Contests.  I like them all, particularly when they're combined, and presumably you do, too, or you wouldn't be reading.  But just in case you're confused, consider this [graphic of the three primary colors of light, which I'm going to pretend is a] Venn diagram:

Puzzles are the red circle:  Where the purpose is to solve something, like a crossword or a Sudoku or a dot-to-dot.

Hunts are the green circle:  Where the purpose is to find something, like a Where's Waldo book or your quest to figure out where you left your car keys.

Contests are the blue circle:  Where the purpose is to win something, whether it's an actual prize, like the lottery, or nothing at all, like a foot race with your best friend when you're 5.

Those are all well and good, but things really start get interesting in the intersections:

Puzzle Hunts (yellow):  Activities where you have to solve something to find something.  Examples include Geocaching, non-competitive Orienteering, or the treasure hunts I make for my kids at Christmas.  Note that both Orienteering and Geocaching involve mapping and navigation; I'm just going to decree that any navigation activity is pretty much a puzzle hunt.  Obviously, a lot of the time reading a map can be trivial exercise, but it can be puzzling.  Plus you let me get away with calling a dot-to-dot a puzzle, didn't you?  There, I've run rings around you, logically.


Puzzle Contests (I think they call it magenta, but it looks pink to me):  NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday has a contest every week presented by Will Shortz.  Games magazine, which I subscribed to in my youth (back when it was edited by, hmm, Will Shortz), is still being published, and still has monthly contests, both in the magazine and now, online.  I swear one guy named Kyle Corbin from North Carolina won nearly every one of them.  Closer to home, by my definitions above, any two or more player game that involves some strategy, from chess to Go Fish, is both a contest and a puzzle, though usually with very low to no stakes.

Hunt Contests (cyan, or light blue for the rest of us):  An Easter Egg hunt, assuming there's more than one person participating.  A classic scavenger hunt, where you have to find a list of items. 

And finally, the holy grail:

Puzzle Hunt Contests  (the white part in the middle):  Competitive orienteering and navigation races, including alleycats. the Canlis menu hunt, Masquerade and other similar 'armchair treasure hunt' books, and hopefully a number of other contests that will sustain this blog for weeks and months to come.

That's nice.  Who the hell are you? 

 

I'm guessing most of my vast audience knows this already, but on the off-chance you stumbled here on accident or this blog falls through a wormhole into another dimension, I've won a few of these Puzzle-Hunt-Contests myself over the years, including the 2007 Emerald City Search, the aforementioned Canlis Menu Hunt (well, my team won phase 2 of the hunt; lots of people won individual menus),  and numerous competitive navigation races, usually urban orienteering events (I'm not the person you want to find something in the middle of the woods, trust me on that).  And incidentally, for you probably mythical readers who don't know anything about me:  I live in Seattle.


So, right off, you can guess that at some point I will regale you with stories about my glorious contest wins.  But not this time.  Perhaps more interestingly, I can give you some tips on winning contests of your own.  But not this time.  

Well, okay, here's one tip:  participate!  Which brings me to the end of this first post, and what I hope will become a regular resource:  a list of upcoming events.  Like I said, I'm interested in Puzzle, Hunts, and Contests, and particularly in combinations of 2 or more.  So I try to keep informed as to when I can actually puzzle, hunt and/or contest.  Here's what I'm looking forward to in the next month or so:

Upcoming Puzzle-Hunt-Contests

• Through April 11:  Cedar Grove's Big Dig Scavenger Hunt.   Find a 'Corey' and e-mail its location and secret code to Cedar Grove, and you get a coupon for a bag of compost.  This is really easy, and you should do it if you can use compost at all.  Surely you can, or you can at least give it away as a, ahem, thoughtful gift.  Furthermore, 20 people who find Coreys will be entered into the Big Dig Finals on April 14, where they are guaranteed one of 20 prizes (total value, $6000), in exchange for digging through a pile of compost to find them.  By the way, I've already won one of those 20 spots, so if you want to see me ruin some clothes, come on down to Rainier Beach Urban Farm on the afternoon of April 14.
• April 7:  The Resurrection V alleycat.  Show up at Cal Anderson Park at 2pm, race at 3pm.  An unsanctioned bicycle checkpoint race around Seattle with an Easter/spring theme.  Crosses, marshmallow peeps, and a giant stuffed bunny have figured into the race in the past (and I imagine that bunny will show up again, with the filth of five years on him).  A genuine hoot, and there are actual prizes (I've found that the less-organized a bike race appears, the more likely you will win a prize.  Strange, I know).  Be prepared to ride about 25 miles.
• April 11:  BEAST race #1 (of 2012), at and around Newcastle, WA.  Hardcore adventure racing takes place in the middle of nowhere, where you run around for a bit, ride a mountain bike for a bit, and paddle a kayak or something.  I don't do that.  But I am willing to run around a bit and ride my bike in the wilds of suburban Seattle, which is what a BEAST race is (Barebones Evening Adventure Something Something). Also, to make up for the lack of paddling, there's usually a random extra 'challenge' in the middle of the course on the order of croquet, disc golf, or doing a Winnie the Pooh 30-piece puzzle (harder than you might think after you've biked 10 miles).  Prizes are minimal to non-existent.  Teams encouraged.  If you're never done orienteering, I would not start here; the chances you end up exhausted on some gravel trail in the dark are non-trivial.
• April 20-22:  Orienteering A-Meet, on Whidbey Island and at Lord Hill Park, Snohomish.  The competitive meet registration has closed, but members of the public can just show up and run (or walk) a course.  Don't let the sound of 'A-Meet' intimidate you; that just means the competitive runs are sanctioned by the USOC, but it has no bearing on members of the general public.  There will even be instructors on hand to show you how to work a compass and read a map (and on the easiest course, you probably won't even need a compass).  This would be where to start if you want to do some classic orienteering.  Prizes:  the satisfaction of a job well done.  A nice walk in the woods or on the bluffs of Ft. Ebey State Park.
• April 21 - May 1:  Emerald City Search 2012, part 1.  Find a 'medallion' hidden 'in plain sight' somewhere on public property in Seattle, based on cryptic riddle clues.  Prize package of at least $9000.  More on this later, but it will really help you to look at old clues to have some hope of winning this contest.  Typically, clues get easier as it goes along, so it will be miraculous if anyone finds it in the opening weekend, but pathetic if no one finds it before the second weekend.
• April 28:  Columbia City Street Scramble.  Snohomish too far for you to go?  Afraid of getting lost in the woods?  Head down to Columbia City for this checkpoint race on foot or bike.  You could even take light rail and eat BBQ afterwards (or during, for that matter).  You get a map with 30+ checkpoints (each worth various points) and try to visit as many as you can in 90 minutes or 3 hours.  Technically, this is 'urban orienteering' and a 'rogaine' (in classic orienteering, you have to visit the checkpoints in order; in a rogaine you can visit as many as you like in any order you like).  But really, this is just a scavenger hunt in a cool neighborhood where your chances of getting truly lost are negligible.  Prize:  A ribbon and a chocolate bar if you come in first in one of the (numerous) categories.  Look for me in the 'riding a bike while towing an 8-year old' category.
• May 3:  First Thursday Adventure Run, Road Runner Sports, Green Lake.  Run (or walk) to checkpoints in the neighborhood for an hour, get raffle tickets, drink a beer while waiting to see if one of your tickets is drawn.  Prize package of $3000 in merchandise and gift cards from Road Runner and the various checkpoint businesses (plus they always have an after-party at a local bar with another raffle worth about $500).  Pre-register to save time and to get the opportunity to buy a beer for $1 (you used to get a free beer before the Washington State Liquor Control Board stepped in).  Buy an event T-shirt for double raffle tickets for the rest of the year, as well as a free beer for every run.  Note:  I bought a shirt for the April run, and it promptly paid for itself as one of the extra tickets yielded a prize of a couple of restaurant gift cards.

Ongoing:  try out those Games magazine contests, or do some geocaching.  Some of the puzzles to find a cache can be insanely hard. 


Full disclosure;  BEAST races and Street Scrambles are put on by people I know.  The orienteering A-meet is put on by someone I know.  All those races are sponsored by the Cascade Orienteering Club, which I am a member of.  The Resurrection Alleycat is put on by people I know.  The Big Dig is sponsored by Cedar Grove compost, which I use, and Seattle Public Utilities, who takes away my garbage, recycling and yard waste.  I probably met the founder of the company that writes the riddles for the Emerald City Search briefly when I won it back in 2007.  I've bought a lot of running shoes at Road Runner Sports, and they keep sending me catalogs in the mail.