Friday, July 13, 2012

Summer Puzzle Hunt Wrap-up


What you get if you Google 'run bike fun wine'


Last Sunday, under sunny skies, 8 teams competed in my Summer Puzzle Hunt at the University of Washington.  Much running and biking around ensued, fun was had by all, and prizes were awarded.  You can view the clues and see how many you can figure out.  Go ahead, I'll wait.

Spoilers


The original Washington Elm scion, in front of Lewis Hall

Okay, I'm done waiting, time to give you the answers.

1, 2:   I think that I shall two times see/General Washington’s progeny.  (2 locations)

This is a takeoff on the Joyce Kilmer poem, Trees ("I think that I shall never see/A poem lovely as a tree.").  There's a particularly famous tree known as the Washington Elm, under which Washington took command of the American Army (except this probably didn't actually happen).  This tree is long gone, but scions of the elm were planted all over the country, including 2 in Seattle.  One is on the UW campus, between Clark Hall and the Communications Building, the other is in Evergreen Washelli cemetery up on Aurora.  More info is on Evergreen Washelli's page.

3: Find the coordinates of the final location of this geocache:
http://coord.info/GC1XKCM .

See Geocaching Puzzle of the Week, at the bottom of this post.

4:  In the thick fog, the Brontes lost their way/Their cargo (and their pen names) came through to save the day

This is based on an interesting story that appears in Paul Dorpat's Seattle Now and Then (and which I can't find anywhere online).  The Territorial University ordered a bell for its (at the time) only building, which was shipped to it aboard the bark Brontes.  It was foggy as the Brontes was approaching Seattle, and the ship got caught on the shallow mudflats (where SoDo is now) as the tide was going out.  The captain got the bright idea to summon help by ringing his cargo, the large bell.  People came running to see what the commotion was, and the ship was successfully pushed back out to sea before the tide went out.  This bell became the Denny Bell, now located at the top of Denny Hall.

What makes this story doubly interesting to me (and makes the riddle solvable), is that 'Bell' was the pen name adopted by all three Bronte sisters, to disguise the fact that they were female authors (frowned on at the time).  Charlotte Bronte was Currer Bell, Anne Bronte was Acton Bell, and Emily Bronte was Ellis Bell.  The winning team actually found the checkpoint using this information; the others who found it used the hint I provided at checkpoint 12.

I'm on a boat!  But not really (it was just a pier built to look like a boat)


5:  Holy Rip Van Winkle!  You had a big audition with E&E Productions scheduled for July 8, 1972, at the Showboat Theater.  But apparently your Mickey Mouse alarm clock didn’t go off, and you slept for 40 years!  Still, this could be your big break!  Better go see if they’re still there!  Knock ‘em dead!

The only difficulty here is figuring out where the Showboat Theater used to be located.  A cursory Google search says it was down by the water near the University Medical Center, which would be enough to solve it, as this was a manned checkpoint.  There's a picnic table east of the Ocean Sciences Building that has a sign commemorating the Showboat, and my wife, Elizabeth and our son Emmett were waiting there; participants who found them had to sing a song as an 'audition' to complete the checkpoint.

Don't mess with the monkey

6:  Visit Populus tremuloides, being careful to sneak past the monkey guards.

Populus tremuloides is the Latin name for quaking aspen.  The monkey guards are the statues outside the Medicinal Herb Garden, south of the Chemistry building.

7-8:  Repetitive building name, in more ways than one.  (2 locations)

There are a number of buildings with the same name:  two Gates Halls, two Allen Halls, not to mention a number of 'annexes'.  But even more repetitive than these are the two Hall Halls, better known as Hall Health (near the HUB) and Bejamin Hall Hall (on the Burke-Gilman west of the University Bridge).

9:

A straightforward orienteering checkpoint to the Ernest Conrad Dedicatory Manhole.  No, really.

This guy ain't gonna sell a lot of T-shirts

10:  Visit the home of the Sun Dodgers, circa 1919, and play a sport the current Sun Dodgers might be more comfortable with.

For a long time, the University of Washington football team was just known as 'the University of Washington football team', but then colleges started jumping on the 'mascot' bandwagon, and the UW had to join in.  By student vote, and to the regents' chagrin, UW's first official mascot name was the Sun Dodgers.  Anticipating future Nike revenue, this only lasted a few years before they changed it to the Huskies.  Nowadays, the Sundodgers is the name of the men's ultimate frisbee club team.

Back in these simpler times, the football team also played in a simpler stadium.  That is to say, not a stadium at all, but a cleared field on the northeast corner of campus known as Denny Field.  Denny Field is still there, although much of the real estate has been converted to tennis and handball courts, as well as dormitories.  This was a manned checkpoint, featuring a challenge I stole from a BEAST race.  You had to complete a hole of frisbee golf, with the twist that after each throw, you had to run back to the tee and then to the disk.  Could have been worse; during the BEAST race, you had to run to the disk, then back to tee, then back to the disk.

This one's definitely a copy

11:  Omar wanted to know if MOMA’s was a copy.

Omar is my son.  MOMA is the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.  MOMA and the UW have one piece of art in common:  they both have a Broken Obelisk (MOMA's is in their sculpture garden, UW's is in Red Square, of course).

12: ESE ROAM RO RYEGROG EARN EGG’IASM KEDS FRO A THIN.  EB EQUIT DAN EPILOT.

It pays to study the old Canlis clues, as this is just a variant on a Canlis menu hide at Warren Magnuson's desk (Maggie's desk, an anagram of EGG'SIAM KEDS), which is normally located in an alcove in the Suzzallo Library Graduate Reading Room.  The desk is currently being renovated, but I camped outside the alcove anyway, at least until my laptop batteries ran low and I had to move to an outlet just outside the Reading Room.

I had two copies of Seattle Now and Then with me, and instructed people who found me (who were quiet and polite) that they could get a hint for either question 4 or 11.  If they chose 11, I gave them 'Barnett Newman', the name of the sculptor of Broken Obelisk.  If they chose 4, I gave them one of the books, and told them to look in the 30s (the story referenced above, Denny's Bell, is number 37 in the book).

Bonus Checkpoint

Doomed Prunus


Every time a team visited a checkpoint and verified it with the web application, they got a clue:  a word or two that together spelled out a bonus riddle for checkpoint 13.  In full, the riddle read:

Arrived in 1939, saved in 1964, replaced by 1959.  But where are/were the others?

I also tweeted 2 extra clues during the event.  The first clue:  'Prunus', which is the genus of trees such as apples, plums and cherries.  The second:  'Socratic confusion re: Psalm 145 (8)'.  This is a cryptic crossword clue with the answer 'acrostic' ('Socratic confusion' indicates an anagram of 'Socratic'. Psalm 145 is an acrostic.  You should read about cryptic crossword clues if you're serious about puzzle-solving).

If you took the first letter of the first word (the 'A' word) for all the checkpoints, it spells the acrostic 'Canal Reserve', the location of the bonus checkpoint.  The riddle refers to the Yoshino cherry trees in the quad, which were acquired for the Arboretum but actually planted in the Canal Reserve (where the original, small Montlake cut used to be) in 1939.  Most were moved in 1964 to avoid being bulldozed for highway 520, and the class of 1959 recently raised money to have replacement trees planted, as the original trees are getting near the end of their lives.  The riddle refers to the fact that a few of the trees (2-6) were left in their original place, as they were not in the path of the freeway.  You used to be able to see them in the section of the Canal Reserve west of MOHAI.  Omar and I visited the area the day before the Puzzle Hunt, and talked to the brother of a local landowner who was watering some plants.  He knew all about the cherry trees, as well as other original plantings, as he is a landscape architect, and he confirmed my observation that the Yoshinos all appear to be gone.  They would have disappeared soon, anyway, as this land is slated to be wiped out when the 520 bridge is replaced and the freeway re-aligned.

Next time

Lessons Learned


Although people had a good time, there were a couple of things that could definitely have been improved.  First of all, the questions were, on the whole, too hard.  A number of people didn't get any of them, which had to be disappointing.  I should have created a few 'gimme' questions, and made a few more a little easier.  Interestingly, I did think checkpoint #9 was a gimme, but even some of the people who were orienteers could not find it, likely because manholes are pretty inobtrusive.

Second, I had checkpoint volunteers sit around for 3 hours with not very many visitors.  I should have made the manned checkpoints (at least the Showboat and Sun Dodgers checkpoints) pretty easy, so that more people would go to them, more quickly.  That way, the volunteers should have been able to knock off early, and more people would have been able to take part in the fun/silly stunts at the checkpoints.

Combining these ideas, I should have made the manned checkpoint clues very easy, which would have been better for the volunteers and allowed more people to have more fun.

Also, registration was too slow.  I should have just had people sign in on a piece of paper with all their information, which would have been much quicker.  There were also a number of technical glitches with people being unable to log into the web application, which I think were caused by smartphones aggressively caching login credentials (most of these were cases where people tried to log in with a special id different from their usual Google id).  These could be averted by creating a toy application before the event solely to test login ids.

Gold doubloons and pieces of eight


Coming up  

(italics = new since last week)
  • Renton River Days Duck Hunt III - now through July 24.  Follow the clues (posted on Facebook) to find rubber ducks hidden in Renton.  Bring your findings to Renton River Days (July 25-27).  The more you've found, the more chances you have to win a prize.
  • Road to the NACCC - July 14.  Alleycat (to fundraise for next year's North American Cycle Courier Championships), followed by a concert.
  • Evening Orienteering - Wednesday, July 18, Big Finn Hill Park, Kirkland.  With a big barbecue afterwards.
  • Seafair Treasure Hunt - Thursday, July 19.  Thursdays through August  2, visit a Seafair info booth to find a 'treasure' and win a prize.  Locations vary.
  • Pirate Treasure Hunt - Friday, July 20, 6pm.  Meadowbrook Community Center.  Family event, I imagine.
  • Amazing Kitchen Race - July 21, 11am.  Scavenger Hunt + cooking competition.  Paging Menu Hunters Anonymous.
  • Seattle Urban Beer Hunt - July 22, noon.  Photo scavenger hunt + beer + some other stuff.  Valuable prizes plus, hey, free beer.  21 and over only (duh).  Groupon discounts are out there, at least for one more day.
  • Urban Bike Adventure - July 22.  Looks like a bike version of the Amazing Race.  Solve puzzles, bike to checkpoints, cash and other prizes.  I'd totally enter this except I have a prior commitment.
  • Tour de Watertower - July 22.  A punishing race to all of Seattle's high hills ('cause that's where the watertowers are, baby).  Since the towers and the starting/ending points are widely known, this race favors speed and endurance over route planning.
  • Choose Your Own Campus Adventure - July 22, UW.   Orienteering on campus, with a get-together at the Big Time Brewery afterwards (in the early afternoon, which means the Big Time is all-ages).
  • Seafair Treasure Hunt - Thursday, July 26.  See Thursday, July 19.
  • Seattle Night and Day Challenge, July 28-29, show up around 2:30 at Road Runner Sports in Green Lake.  See the interview above.  Basically a gigantic Street Scramble that covers most of Seattle and starts at 4pm, with options for 90 minutes, 3 hours, 7 hours, and 16 hours.  16 hours gets you a real 'night and day' experience.  I prefer the 7 hour option, which still gets you some night, but with less of the hangover after you pull an all-nighter.  If you clear the course (I almost did it once; forgot the Locks closed at 9pm, dammit), you'll go around 70-80 miles.  This will be my 9th Night and Day.
  • Seafair Treasure Hunt - Thursday, August 2.  See Thursday, July 19.
  • First Thursday Adventure Run - August 2, Road Runner Sports Green Lake.  As always, free, with thousands of dollars in prizes raffled off at the end.  Bonus:  July's run had a Slip and Slide and a bouncy house.
  • Gumshoe 5K - August 3-12.  A charity event where you walk around Greenwood and solve a puzzle using clues you find along the way.
  • Down the Rabbit Hole Alleycat and Sprint - August 4, Cool Guy Park.  Put on by the organizers of the UW alleycat earlier this year.  Should be fun.
  • Choose your own Paddle Adventure - August 5, UW Waterfront Activities Center.  Canoe orientering.  Rent a canoe, or bring your own (kayaks are okay as well).  Don't forget the sunscreen, and watch out for thick lilypad patches and swans (those guys are nasty).  Note that this ends at 12:30, so the registration is open early (9-11am).
  • BEAST race #4 - August 7, Issaquah.  Did I ever tell you about the time I was on a BEAST race in Maple Valley and the course got me so confused I ended up going to the other end of the Cedar River Trail before I realized I was heading east instead of west?  Bring a compass.
  • Evening Orienteering - Wednesday, August 8, Luther Burbank Park, Mercer Island.  If it's sunny, bring your bathing suit and have a swim afterwards.
  • Pirate P"arr"ty - August 8, Ravenna-Eckstein Community Center.  For the kids, includes a treasure hunt.
  • Great Urban Race - August 11, starting at Jillian's.  Amazing-race style event.

Still going on

Also

There seems to be a mini-trend of PR firms using treasure and scavenger hunts to promote movies, TV shows, and other items.  For example:  USA Network Launches Virtual Treasure Hunt

Geocache puzzle of the week:  Guardrail Multicache.  Really more of a puzzle than a multicache, and the final cache find has eluded me for weeks.  Still, solving the initial puzzle is a good way to spend a few minutes.  Stop by the guardrail at the end of 36th Ave NE near the Burke-Gilman, and look for something that doesn't belong.


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Friday, July 6, 2012

Terry Farrah on the Origins of Night and Day

Where the Puzzles Begin

But first, a word from our sponsor...

This Sunday, July 8, I'm putting on a puzzle hunt at the UW.  If you're interested in this blog, you should attend.  It's free, and there are prizes, and you'll probably win one because there are so many prizes.  And you'll have fun and it'll be sunny and all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.


Terry Farrah

Now, back to our program


Terry Farrah and I went to grad school in Computer Science together at the University of Washington and then promptly fell out of touch for a number of years.  Imagine my surprise when I met her again at the very first Street Scramble in the University District (April, 2004).  She wasn't competing, she was in charge, as part of the (at the time) 2-person company, Meridian Geographics.

Street Scrambles are technically orienteering events (urban rogaines), but it's easier to think of them as neighborhood scavenger hunts.  You're given a map with around 30 checkpoints and your object is to visit as many as possible in a time limit (typically, 90 minutes or 3 hours).  Usually, the checkpoints are located at interesting places or things.


Eight years later, Meridian Geographics is still putting on Street Scrambles and other events under the leadership of co-founder Eric Bone.  Terry has a different, full-time job, but is still in the loop, since she and Eric are partners who live in the same house (along with a few housemates).  I stopped by a few weekends ago to interview her about the origins of the Night and Day Challenge, a much longer version of a Street Scramble.  While we were talking, Eric and a volunteer were finalizing the map and questions for the next day's Issaquah Street Scramble.


This tree is an inspiration

The First Night and Day Challenge

Terry:  The first Night and Day was in 2003, and the first Street Scramble was in 2004. [...]  Eric and I went for a long run in October 2002 in the San Francisco Bay area, on the Southern Peninsula.  It was a 15 mile run where we visited a few different sort of touristic spots, but all along trails.  There's a thing called the Methuselah Tree, and there's a thing called the Sandstone Formation. 
And maybe it was this sort of orienteering-like aspect to our run that prompted Eric to say, "I want to put on a rogaine in Seattle someday."  And I said, "Like an urban rogaine?"  And he said, "Yeah, yeah." 
[...This eventually led to,] "Let's do it in Summer 2003."  At the time I was either mostly or fully unemployed, so it sounded like a fun project to take on.
And it was a fun project, because of (or in spite of) the fact that she had never put on an orienteering event before.  She volunteered to put on an event in April 2003 for the Bay Area Orienteering Club, to learn more about how to do it, but there were a number of obstacles they had to overcome.  The most obvious was the maps.  Eric had made orienteering maps before, but not on this scale, and it was clear you could not make an orienteering map of Seattle (and parts of Vashon Island, where they had a few checkpoints) in the time they had, as orienteering maps feature a number of details that simply aren't available on standard maps (for example, every building and most man-made objects), and use special symbols to boot.  Luckily, Eric came up with the idea of using US Geological Survey maps instead (with some corrections, as these maps are typically decades old).  These days, you can get map data from the City of Seattle pretty easily, but back then the USGS was pretty much the only game in town.  To this day, Street Scrambles and Night and Day use USGS maps as the basis for the event maps.

Not anymore


Mistakes were made


They made a number of mistakes, including putting checkpoints at overpasses without telling you if the checkpoint was on the overpass or below, and not indicating access points, such as how to cross the 1st Avenue S bridge.  The latter error was compounded by the fact that they did not allow you to bring along any other maps.  A Seattle bike map would definitely have helped at the 1st Ave S bridge.

The 'no maps' rule has since been dropped, as well as a 'no bikes' rule (they thought they wouldn't be safe to ride overnight).  The first Night and Day also had a rule (now dropped) prohibiting you from being south of Denny Way in the wee hours, due to safety concerns.  This rule made it particularly difficult to go to Vashon Island, as you were supposed to go there from the start in the Central District, find all the checkpoints, take a ferry back, and then make your way back north of Denny, all between 4pm and 11pm.

A common feature of other rogaines is the hash house, where you can go to get food at any time during the race, so they had an elaborate spread of awesome food, most of which went uneaten.  As Terry said, "When they were coming in at 11pm, they just wanted to go home and go to sleep.  And when they were coming in at 8am, they just wanted to lie down on the ground and rest their muscles."

On your mark, get set...

High Points


Between 105-115 people participated (all on foot), because Terry worked hard to get people to come, posting in as many running and orienteering event calendars and e-mail lists as she could for months in advance.  A number of people came up from the Bay Area, including a group of Girl Scouts who stayed after they finished the race to help out (because that's what Girl Scouts do).  Other notable volunteers were Virginia Stratton, Bruce McAllister, Don Atkinson, and Dave Enger (who vetted the course on bike because they wouldn't let him race on his bike).

Terry's favorite part was probably the start.  "To have worked for months on this thing, and then have 100+ people standing there and you say 'Go!' and they all run.  That was such a thrill.  It was just awesome."


The finish was also exciting, but then came the scoring, where there were also a few glitches.  The answers were not arranged in a way that made it easy to score, including a string of 5 questions that all had the same answer, which made it difficult to see which ones were actually answered.  They also thought they needed to have multiple answer sheets to discourage sharing answers.  There were 3 different sheets, which meant every checkpoint had 3 different questions and 3 different correct answers (as someone who's designed other courses, I often have trouble coming up with one question at a checkpoint I want to use).


A number of the checkpoints were deliberately uninteresting, like manhole covers or fire hydrants, because their original concept was to use mundane checkpoints.  But as they got out in the field to scout out checkpoints, common sense kicked in and they started choosing distinctive objects like sculptures and odd signs.  Nowadays, they only set checkpoints at a manhole cover or hydrant as a last resort.


Seattle Night and Day Challenge 2012 takes place Saturday, July 28 (ends on July 29 if you go all 16 hours).  This year the event center is Road Runner Sports in Green Lake.  I will be there (bike, 7 hours).  See the list of current and upcoming events for more info.


Still going on


  • Book Scavenger hunt - Seattle Public Library's Teen Summer Reading Program.  .
  • Ready Player One Easter Egg Hunt - The 2nd gate is open, and it leads to a Facebook game created by Richard Garriott, aka 'Lord British' from the 80's Ultima computer games.  I wasted a lot of time playing those game.  Some things never change.

Coming up  

(italics = new since last week)
  • Renton River Days Duck Hunt III - now through July 24.  Follow the clues (posted on Facebook) to find rubber ducks hidden in Renton.  Bring your findings to Renton River Days (July 25-27).  The more you've found, the more chances you have to win a prize.
  • Sue Bird Bobblehead Hunt - July 5-7.  Somebody's been taking hints from the Seattle Opera.  Follow Doppler (the Storm's mascot) on Twitter to find a Sue Bird bobblehead and a Seattle Storm prize package.  Only one bobblehead left, so Saturday's your last chance.  Hint:  the first 2 were hidden in businesses that sponsor or are affiliated with the Storm.
  • CitySolve Urban Race - July 7.  Another Amazing-Race
  • TRIOBA 24 Hour Adventure Race - July 7, Cougar, WA.  "There will be 15-25 miles of flat water paddling, 50-75 miles of biking, and 20-30 miles of trekking and trail running."  Be prepared, or just stay at home and rest up for...
  • Summer Puzzle Hunt 2012 - July 8, 1pm.  See above.  Just go.
  • Road to the NACCC - July 14.  Alleycat (to fundraise for next year's North American Cycle Courier Championships), followed by a concert.
  • Evening Orienteering - Wednesday, July 18, Big Finn Hill Park, Kirkland.  With a big barbecue afterwards.
  • Pirate Treasure Hunt - Friday, July 20, 6pm.  Meadowbrook Community Center.  Family event, I imagine.
  • Amazing Kitchen Race - July 21, 11am.  Scavenger Hunt + cooking competition.  Paging Menu Hunters Anonymous.
  • Seattle Urban Beer Hunt - July 22, noon.  Photo scavenger hunt + beer + some other stuff.  Valuable prizes plus, hey, free beer.  21 and over only (duh).  Groupon discounts are out there, at least for one more day.
  • Urban Bike Adventure - July 22.  Looks like a bike version of the Amazing Race.  Solve puzzles, bike to checkpoints, cash and other prizes.  I'd totally enter this except I have a prior commitment.
  • Tour de Watertower - July 22.  A punishing race to all of Seattle's high hills ('cause that's where the watertowers are, baby).  Since the towers and the starting/ending points are widely known, this race favors speed and endurance over route planning.
  • Choose Your Own Campus Adventure - July 22, UW.   Orienteering on campus, with a get-together at the Big Time Brewery afterwards (in the early afternoon, which means the Big Time is all-ages).
  • Seattle Night and Day Challenge, July 28-29, show up around 2:30 at Road Runner Sports in Green Lake.  See the interview above.  Basically a gigantic Street Scramble that covers most of Seattle and starts at 4pm, with options for 90 minutes, 3 hours, 7 hours, and 16 hours.  16 hours gets you a real 'night and day' experience.  I prefer the 7 hour option, which still gets you some night, but with less of the hangover after you pull an all-nighter.  If you clear the course (I almost did it once; forgot the Locks closed at 9pm, dammit), you'll go around 70-80 miles.  This will be my 9th Night and Day.
  • First Thursday Adventure Run - August 2, Road Runner Sports Green Lake.  As always, free, with thousands of dollars in prizes raffled off at the end.  Bonus:  July's run had a Slip and Slide and a bouncy house.
  • Gumshoe 5K - August 3-12.  A charity event where you walk around Greenwood and solve a puzzle using clues you find along the way.
  • Choose your own Paddle Adventure - August 5, UW Waterfront Activities Center.  Canoe orientering.  Rent a canoe, or bring your own (kayaks are okay as well).  Don't forget the sunscreen, and watch out for thick lilypad patches and swans (those guys are nasty).  Note that this ends at 12:30, so the registration is open early (9-11am).
  • BEAST race #4 - August 7, Issaquah.  Did I ever tell you about the time I was on a BEAST race in Maple Valley and the course got me so confused I ended up going to the other end of the Cedar River Trail before I realized I was heading east instead of west?  Bring a compass.

Also

Yet another armchair treasure hunt.

Geocache puzzle of the week:  Something Evil at the UW.  I've been kinda busy, but this is a good one.  I'm inexorably working my way down to the final location, which (open secret) is in the swamps by Foster Island.  Good times.





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Friday, June 29, 2012

Quick and dirty

Canoe orienteering protip:  stay in the boat

I've got a puzzle hunt coming up next weekend (sign up, folks!), and Potlatch this weekend, so my vast audience will have to be satisfied this week with a quick and dirty post.  Plus I'm exhausted from winning the Issaquah Street Scramble and DNF'ing the BEAST race at Union Bay (who thought getting out of their canoe would be a good idea during canoe orienteering?  This guy.)

The Past:  See what you've been missing



The Present:  If you lived here, you'd be home by now




I only quote the finest films

The Future: That is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives  

  • Long O - June 30, Salmon La Sac.  The mountains will keep the rain away, right?  Right?
  • ZLOGCAT - June 30, Cal Anderson Park.  Alleycat race.
  • Gorilla Challenge - June 30.  Amazing-Race + gorilla suits
  • 4th of July Cheshiahud Challenge - July 4.  Make your way around Green Lake, answer trivia questions for a chance to win Gold Bumbershoot passes.  Free.
  • First Thursday Adventure Run - July 5, Green Lake.
  • CitySolve Urban Race - July 7.  Another Amazing-Race
  • TRIOBA 24 Hour Adventure Race - July 7, Cougar, WA.  "There will be 15-25 miles of flat water paddling, 50-75 miles of biking, and 20-30 miles of trekking and trail running."  Be prepared, or just stay at home and rest up for...
  • Summer Puzzle Hunt 2012 - July 8, 1pm.  Put on by yours truly.
  • Road to the NACCC - July 14.  Alleycat (to fundraise for next year's North American Cycle Courier Championships), followed by a concert.
  • Evening Orienteering - Wednesday, July 18, Big Finn Hill Park, Kirkland.  With a big barbecue afterwards.
  • Pirate Treasure Hunt - Friday, July 20, 6pm.  Meadowbrook Community Center.  Family event, I imagine.
  • Amazing Kitchen Race - July 21, 11am.  Scavenger Hunt + cooking competition.  Paging Menu Hunters Anonymous.
  • Urban Bike Adventure - July 22.  Looks like a bike version of the Amazing Race.  Solve puzzles, bike to checkpoints, cash and other prizes.  I'd totally enter this except I have a prior commitment.
  • Tour de Watertower - July 22.  A punishing race to all of Seattle's high hills ('cause that's where the watertowers are, baby).  Since the towers and the starting/ending points are widely known, this race favors speed and endurance over route planning.
  • Choose Your Own Adventure - July 22, UW.   Orienteering on campus, with a get-together at the Big Time Brewery afterwards (in the early afternoon, which means the Big Time is all-ages).
  • Seattle Night and Day Challenge, July 28-29, show up around 2:30 at Road Runner Sports in Green Lake.  Basically a gigantic Street Scramble that covers most of Seattle and starts at 4pm, with options for 90 minutes, 3 hours, 7 hours, and 16 hours.  16 hours gets you a real 'night and day' experience.  I prefer the 7 hour option, which still gets you some night, but with less of the hangover after you pull an all-nighter.  If you clear the course (I almost did it once; forgot the Locks closed at 9pm, dammit), you'll go around 70-80 miles.
Geocache puzzle of the week:  Puzzler's Puzzle.  One puzzle too easy for you?  How about 31?  Solve (or at least partly solve) 30 puzzles so you can solve the underlying meta-puzzle.  This one took me about 15 days.
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Friday, June 22, 2012

Divvying up the Spoils

Look at this blanket, filled with glamorous prizes

Everyone wants to have this problem:  you've just won a contest, and now you have to divide the prizes among your teammates.  If you won it all by yourself, no problem, but that's usually not the case.  And don't think you can put this off until you've got the prizes in hand.  In one contest I participated in in Germany, teams split up after arguing about how to split the prize before they were even close to finding it.

So it's best to have at least the outline of a plan beforehand.  My suggestions:

Say you're going to split it all evenly (or as evenly as possible) and work out the details later.

If you do manage to win a big enough prize (or a set of prizes) see if there's a way to use part of it to throw a party for everyone who participated and helped.  That way, even people who performed a minor role, such as lending you a piece of equipment or watching your kids while you went out searching late at night, can get a reward.

If the prizes are easy to divide, do so.  But if they're a diverse lot (like the collection of things above that I won from the Emerald City Search), don't bother trying to make things come out evenly in value.  Instead, ask everyone what they want most and try to get everyone at least one of the things on their list (it's better to get people to declare their wish list in public, so that if someone doesn't get their first choice, they know why).  If there are conflicts, order people at random rather than trying to figure out who 'deserves' it more. After everyone's got something they want, people take turns picking prizes from the pool like an NFL draft, until everything's picked or no one wants anything that's left.  If you manage to do this quickly, you can take the leftovers to the party and invite your guests to just take what they want.  Or you can donate the remainders to a charitable auction, or use them as prizes at your own puzzle hunt.

Charitable Canlis Card

One of these cards is not like the other

One of the Canlis cards I won back in 2010 poses an entirely different problem.  The card is good for a dinner for two people, annually, but I cannot use it myself.  Instead, I must give it away to a person who has displayed philanthropy (in some way) in the Seattle area.

There were 11 of us who participated in the final hunt that won the cards, and my first impulse was to rotate the power to choose the card's recipient among the members of my team.  But my wife suggested a better idea would be for us to do it together as a team.  So this week, for the second time, as many of the 11 that could got together at our house to have a drink, nosh, and discuss who should get the 'charitable Canlis card'.

Only 7 of the 11 could make it this year.  One person was out of town, but he wanted to participate, so we tried various technological solutions, eventually settling on a Google+ 'hangout' (which also allowed us to simultaneously see and edit a Google doc listing the people we were considering).  After we got the hangout set up, we decided we might as well invite the two members who had moved away last year as well.  One of them ended up joining us, making 9 in all.

I had decided we should pick the recipient by 'consensus', but there are a number of ways to do so.  I liked the Apache Project's consensus method the best, although I had to modify it for the case where we had to choose one of many possibilities.  Under the Apache model every voting member has 3 possible votes:  thumbs up, thumbs down, or no vote (abstain).  Thumbs up and no vote can be made without explanation (although you're welcome to explain if you like), but you can't vote thumbs down without a good explanation.  In most cases, a single thumbs down means a veto of whatever is being voted on, which works well in a consensus situation, since presumably anyone who gets a thumbs down will not be agreed on by everyone.  Conversely, everyone who doesn't get a thumbs down is at least acceptable to all the voters, so our only question was which of the people who got no negative votes is the 'best' candidate.

[Incidentally, most of the negative votes are by the person who suggested the candidate in the first place.  "I know I suggested X, but I'm not sure about them, so I'll come back next year and see if I can find someone else who does the same thing better."]

Last year, the answer was pretty easy, as one candidate had thumbs up from everyone, and no other candidate was even close.  This year, however, we had 3 candidates with 8 or 9 thumbs up, one with 5, and a few with 2 or 3.  So I made it up as I went along.  We dropped a few, had another round of voting, which narrowed it down to 2 finalists, and eventually selected Bonnie Miller, by the oh-so-definitive score of 5 votes to 4 (good thing we found person #9).  Bonnie has volunteered her time for years organizing and working on environmental projects in Seattle, most notably at Magnuson Park and with the Friends of the Burke Gilman Trail.


News and Events

The 9-5 Scavenger Hunt was magical

 

Ongoing


Upcoming 

  • Girls of Summer Alleycat, pt. 2 - June 23, I-5 Colonnade Park. Over $3000 in prizes.  Holy smoke.
  • Urban Dare - June 23. Amazing-Race style event. 
  • Issaquah Street Scramble - June 24. I will be there.
  • BEAST race #3 - June 28, UW Waterfront Activities Center.  I will also be here, as I love canoe orienteering.
  • Long O - June 30, Salmon La Sac.  Great spot to camp and orienteer.
  • ZLOGCAT - June 30, Cal Anderson Park.  Alleycat race, sponsored by a fixed gear bike blog.  Costs more than most alleycats ($15), but you get a T-shirt, and I'm guessing the prizes are better.
  • Gorilla Challenge - June 30.  Amazing-Race style event.  Bonus:  people running around in gorilla suits!
  • First Thursday Adventure Run - July 5, Green Lake.
  • CitySolve Urban Race - July 7.  Another Amazing-Race-esque race.
  • TRIOBA 24 Hour Adventure Race - July 7, Cougar, WA.  "There will be 15-25 miles of flat water paddling, 50-75 miles of biking, and 20-30 miles of trekking and trail running."  Be prepared, or just stay at home and rest up for...
  • Summer Puzzle Hunt 2012 - July 8, 1pm.  Put on by yours truly.
  • Evening Orienteering - Wednesday, July 18, Big Finn Hill Park, Kirkland.  With a big barbecue afterwards.
  • Pirate Treasure Hunt - Friday, July 20, 6pm.  Meadowbrook Community Center.  "Put on your eye patch and bandana and follow the clues in search for hidden treasure with the help from REAL pirates!  A backyard BBQ will follow.  Fun for the whole family."  Sounds like the Seafair pirates just might attend.
  • Urban Bike Adventure - July 22.  Looks like a bike version of the Amazing Race.  Solve puzzles, bike to checkpoints, cash and other prizes.  I'd totally enter this except I have a prior commitment.
  • Tour de Watertower - July 22.  A punishing race to all of Seattle's high hills ('cause that's where the watertowers are, baby).  Since the towers and the starting/ending points are widely known, this race favors speed and endurance over route planning.
  • Choose Your Own Adventure - July 22, UW.   Orienteering on campus, with a get-together at the Big Time Brewery afterwards (in the early afternoon, which means the Big Time is all-ages).
Here's a write-up on last weekend 9-5 all-night bicycle scavenger hunt, by a participant:  9 to 5 on my 925

Geocaching puzzle of the week:  Buta Sudoku  Sudoku with a twist.  I've solved the 4x4 version, but screwed up the 9x9 version twice.  I'll get you, egg!


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Saturday, June 16, 2012

Canlis

Not looking a day over 52

Canlis is a fine dining restaurant in Seattle, just on the south side of the Aurora Bridge.  It's best known for excellent Northwest cuisine, impeccable service, a great view, and their Puzzle Hunt Contests.  As they say on Sesame Street, one of these things is not like the other.

Canlis is a family-owned restaurant, and it's the third generation of owners, Mark and Brian Canlis (grandsons of the founder), who have been driving the Puzzle Hunt Contests.  The great food, service, and view have been there since the beginning.  Or so I've been told; I had never been there until December 2010, when the restaurant was already almost 60 years old.  It's not coincidental that this corresponds to their first contest.

Contest #1 - Cheap Eats

Your key to cheaper fine dining

 

For the restaurant's 60th birthday, the Canlis brothers hid 50 facsimiles of the restaurant's 1950 menu around town, one at a time, usually one per day.  After hiding one, they would release a clue via Facebook or Twitter (for example, "Squash a beetle in your hand", referencing the Fremont Troll, who holds a VW bug in one of his hands).  If you found the menu, you could bring it into the restaurant for a dinner for two at the prices on the 1950s menu (so, for example, $6 for a lobster instead of $60).  In actuality, if you won you got to order off a 2010 version of the 1950 menu, as some dishes they weren't going to do, like 1950's extensive selection of pickled seafoods and shrimp cocktails (my son was actually disappointed about that).  Still, $5 steak and $6 lobster was quite a draw, and thousands of people tried to find the menus.

Some clues were harder than others, but in general they got harder as they went along.  Usually one of the brothers would be on hand to congratulate you when you found a menu.  Sometimes they would even give it to the first person who spotted them and asked for it, particularly if it had been some time since the clue had dropped and no other hunters were in sight.  The sole exception occurred late in the hunt, when they left one at the old Rainier Brewery overnight and tweeted the clue at around 4am.  Sometimes they would each have a menu and you had to find one of them, or they would give a clue that indicated two locations, such as the two ends of the Burke-Gilman Trail and one would be stationed at each spot.

How Church got from Here to There
As a rule, the clues were structured like poems (see below), although they also used simple ciphers and photos.  The clues used a diverse number of tricks about a diverse group of places, although they generally referenced Seattle history, especially Seattle restaurant history.  Most of the answers were Googleable, at least in hindsight.  For example:
Never fear, Church is here, but how did she get from here to there? 
Clearly Church is or was a woman.  But Googling for 'Seattle Church' gets you nowhere.  Wikipedia comes to the rescue, as they have pages of famous people who have a particular surname, which leads you to Ellen Church, the first flight attendant in history, whose plane is on display at the Museum of Flight.  This was the menu I found, which my wife and I used for a delicious and heavily discounted meal on our 14th anniversary.

But that wasn't all, as all the menu winners were invited to participate in a final hunt on New Year's Eve Day.  Everyone could have a team of up to three in a car, and as many as you could get helping at home.  You can read the whole story, but here's a summary:  I assembled a formidable team, and together we solved five clues and a final puzzle in Gasworks Park to find two buried gold Canlis cards, each good for 2 dinners for 2 every year.  One we get to keep; the other must be given away to a philanthropic person in Seattle.  It reminds me of being a character in a Jane Austen novel.  Mr. Darcy is worth 2000/year, Mr. Collins is worth 500/year, and I'm worth 2 fancy meals/year.

Contest #2: Pop-up

Spot the Morse Code (photo by Joshua Longbrake)

 

Early in 2011, the Canlis brothers started a slick online campaign to help their chef, Jason Franey, win an online poll.  They took a series of black-and-white photos of themselves in famous Seattle locations (The Space Needle, Safeco Field, Gasworks Park) wearing signs such as 'Vote for Jason'.  This was clever enough, but there was another contest hidden in the campaign:  each photo had had a letter or letters Photoshopped into it in Morse Code.  After finding 'w', 'w', 'w' and '.' in the first four photos, it wasn't hard to determine that it was a web address.  One enterprising couple paid for a reverse whois lookup and discovered the domain before it had even been set up.

By this point, I had decided it was best to enter these contests as a team (particularly since I was about to go out of Internet range for a Mt. Rainier vacation).  Eventually, our team found "www.qth", which was good enough to guess the correct web address:  www.qthseattle.com (QTH is a 'Q code' from ham radio, indicating "my position is").  This address was subsequently used in Contest #3, so it's no longer secret (and the content has changed).

On the website, there were originally instructions to send an e-mail for a reservation to a pop-up restaurant, where Franey and the rest of the Canlis staff could try something a little different for a couple of nights.  The members of our team, as well as the couple mentioned above were the only ones to get a reservation before the reservations were open up to the general public, and we all got a free meal for two.  I took my older son, who declared it the best meal he had ever had in his life.

Contest #3: Keys

Key #1 was here (Photo by Brian Canlis)
By now, people were beginning to catch on that the Canlis brothers liked putting on these contests, so there was quite a frenzy when they started another one in late September 2011, with a link to the mysterious image above and little other explanation.  Crucial to this contest was the fact that JennyLee Lieseke, who had hunted unsuccessfully for a menu but did manage to get a free meal at the Canlis pop-up, had set up a Facebook group, Menu Hunters Anonymous, back in 2010.  Soon after this contest started, JennyLee started promoting MHA on the Canlis Facebook page as the place to go to talk about the new contest.  This time, the Canlis brothers cryptically mentioned that "you can't do it alone", so everyone seemed eager to collaborate on a solution, and MHA's membership grew from a couple of dozen to over 500 by the end of the contest.

After the first few days, it became clear that each photo represented a sign located somewhere in Seattle, and the signs in the pictures all had a hidden key attached.  After a few days of finding one key a day, the brothers released more details:  there were 30 keys in all, and each represented a table at the restaurant for a special dinner on Sunday, October 30.  Crucially, though, the keys were all already out there.  This started somewhat of a frenzy, as people started looking for and finding keys without clues.  After a day or so, with all the keys mapped on one Google map it became clear that the key locations formed the outline of a shape, which made searching even easier, as the keys could only be on the lines of the shape.  By the 9th day of the contest, all the keys were found.

1 of a precious set of 30 (Photo by Justin Tittelfitz)

But what to do with the keys?  The shape they formed was a giant arrow, and the keys were safe deposit box keys, so even with incomplete information it seemed logical the key bearers should go to a bank at the tip of the arrow.  At the bank, the employees would take your key and let you open a special box which contained your official invitation (and told you how many people were at your table).  On October 30, everyone met for a nice dinner party with great food.  In a great community gesture, many of the people who made contributions to the solution but never found a key (such as the compiler of the map, and the first person who suggested the 'giant arrow theory') got invited by key winners who had room at their table.

Contest #4: ???

There's no reason to think that's the end of the Canlis contests.  On their 61st birthday in December 2011, the Canlis brothers with little warning hid a menu at St. Marks Cathedral on Capitol Hill and released another clue.  They indicated they'll probably continue to hide a menu every year.  But the smart money says there will be another big contest sooner or later.  With great food for free, or at least cheap, a lot of people will be eager to try to win it.  If you live in the Seattle area, like Canlis and Menu Hunters Anonymous on Facebook, and join us for the next hunt.

News and Events

Where you need to be to win a DeLorean from the author of Ready Player One

 

Geocaching puzzle of the week:  I've been working on the Puzzler's Puzzle, which has a number of good puzzles.  Here's one I solved after a fancy dinner (at Place Pigalle, not Canlis) this week:  An Odd Cache.

And there wasn't much of a puzzle to this one, but the Amazing Race analogies continue, and this story has a Seattle connection:  James E Rogers grad wins space trip.



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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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