Post Hunt 2009
Posted in Photos on 05/17/2009 08:49 pm by enjanerdIan and I had been considering going out for to the Post Hunt this year, but hadn’t really gotten a team together. So when Mindless told us that he and Chu were looking for a team, we were convinced!
Ian and I arrived a few minutes early, so we had just enough time to stop by a few of the tents to see what was going on before venturing into the crowds for the opening clues.
We started at the debate puzzle where the two participants were debating House Bill #98999 and emphasized how we needed to focus on the TEXT of the bill. The key was accountability.
In high spirits, we solved that and moved on to the Memorial of Failed Monuments. I didn’t bother fighting through the crowds to get a good shot of the middle statue, which was a vacuum cleaner:
That one took a few minutes longer, but we were soon pleased with our find. “Boo-cannon,” “Hoover,” and “Eyes-an-hour.” Buchanan, Hoover, Eisenhower. Next!
From there, we went to the statues… which we were clueless on for a good half hour before deciding to move on to the other clues and come back to this one (I’m not sure what I did with our clue sheet, so this is the gist of it):
According to Native American legend, Earth was originally pooped out of an eagle.
PLUS
It is believed to be the world’s largest freestanding polyp.
MINUS
Little Alice enjoyed hanging out with Uncle Henry, but always kept a sledge hammer close by in case he got frisky.
We were slow going on the next clue, which was handed to us by a silent man. It wasn’t until we realized that he was this week’s feature First Person Singular that it all made sense.
The last of the main clues was back at the start, where [fake] money was being thrown out to the crowds. Ian solved this in about 15 seconds, which only lead us to be suspicious of the puzzle/answer. But it was the only answer that made sense.
With over an hour left, we headed back to the statues and waited for Mindless and Chu to arrive. Once they did, we went over the thought process we had gone through and all continued to scratch our heads until it was time for the Final Clue.
The music started up: “Old MacDonald had a farm…”
And we were told to “turn that around in our minds.”
The 1337 puzzlers that we are, we paired that up with one of the other answer clues to call a phone number telling us to find, “an important message immediately after 4.”
That’s about as far as we got. We doubted ourselves too much because of our missing clue. And as it turned out, we could’ve gotten to the next step with what we had, but the missing clue from the statue puzzle was key to move on from there.
All in all, a fun day. But those statues sure did stump us! In the end, we were supposed to go to the locations of the statues on the map and not just look at the map. It sounds kind of obvious now, but we thought all the information we needed for the clues was at that location. Oops.
Next year, though… I think we’re getting better. And we made a lot more progress than our team last year. Maybe we’ll even make it to the part where we leave the main stage area for the final puzzle next time. :)
