Piecing Together The Hunt

by Ann Zitterkopf

Photos by Chris Sonneborn

Rice students lose inhibitions while pursuing clues at Galleria....would you ask for a condom for a Ken doll in front of children?

HOW MANY RICE STUDENTS DOES IT TAKE TO SOLVE A PUZZLE? A Hunt team struggles to piece together a puzzle at the Wyndham Warwick.

While some students anticipated Easter break for the rest, relaxation and vegetation, 137 Rice students met in the RMC cloisters, in identical Hunt t-shirts, at 11 a.m. March 28 to participate in The Hunt. The team "Kitten Up a Tree," consisting of Paul Phillips, Darren Dunham, Lindsay Fairhurst, Byrom Dorsey and Chris Higgins won the $175 cash first prize.

This year's Hunt theme centered around a parody of Dr. Seuss - two towns are side by side, but don't talk to each other. Then one town runs out of a prized commodity: Snickleberry juice. Each Hunt team is a party sent out to find the recipe of the five ingredients necessary to make more.

The famous (or infamous) Hunt began a long time ago (last year) in a galaxy far, far away (Brown) when, instead of doing homework, several Brown students began discussing a massive, Houston-wide scavenger hunt under the guidance of Brian O'Neil. This brainstorming session progressed over the following two months into the first Hunt, a difficult series of puzzles that frustrated most of its participants.

This year, however, planners O'Neil and Mark Engelberg wanted to make the Hunt more accessible. "Last year, we made the puzzles difficult. The result was we had some teams who did okay, and others that were frustrated. This year, our goal was not to have winner and losers, but a lot of people who had fun," O'Neil said.

"This year's was do-able and a lot more fun," said Carol Ellinger who participated in both Hunts. "It wasn't as frustrating and we had many of the same people on my team. Last year we were totally clueless, even when the Hunt was over. This year we solved the final puzzle, so technically we did finish the Hunt, but we didn't get all of the five ingredients [correct]. It was almost too easy but not quite."

"You could tell that, since this was the second year, it was three or four times more organized," she said.

The first six hours of the Hunt consisted of four main puzzles. Each of these puzzles produced a Snickleberry juice ingredient and bonus clues. (The bonus clues were animals - and Barry Manilow, who seemed out of place, but not really.) Each team had an additional hour to complete the bonus puzzle, then a two-hour dinner break. At 9:15, the teams recongregated to listen for the final clue, broadcast on FM 107.5.

There was no particular order necessary for solving the puzzles.

Puzzle number one began with a series of multiple choice word problems, which led participants on a run around the Galleria, performing silly tasks. At select stores, if Hunt members completed the task properly, the clerks would pass out the next part of the clue, a series of puzzles and transparencies. The problem? Not all of the tasks on the master clue sheet were legitimate. Zany tasks were intermixed with serious ones. Misguided teams ventured into "Everything's a $1," a boutique, and asked how much each item was or sang, "We wish we were an Oscar Meyer weiner" in the northeast corner of Chick-Fil-A, searching for clues.

A Comedy of Errors

Some teams even left booby traps for their competitors. Kitten Up a Tree member Paul Phillips said his team won, even though other teams led them astray. "One of the stores gave us a clue that commanded us to form a congo line bobbing up and down every eight steps from the Westin Galleria to Lord & Taylor. So we congo-ed all the way - we thought someone would be watching us. It took about five minutes, then we waited for something to happen. Nothing did. Later, we decided that we'd done the congo line on the wrong level, so we went up a flight and did it again. As it turned out, another group had left us a false clue. At another store, the team went in to 'compare elbows with the salesclerk,' who said 'I've already given it away.' Obviously, someone was playing a little sabotage."

The Galleria puzzle was the most difficult one, Phillips said. "We completely misunderstood the wet napkin. At the end of the puzzle, you were supposed to wipe off the transparencies with the napkin to reveal the ingredient . However, we thought a message was written on the napkin in invisible ink. So we went to a game store to look at it under fluorescent light. Then we thought, 'Maybe black light' so we went to Everything A to Z. Finally, we decided the message must be written in lemon juice so heated up the towel and dried it out completely, When one team member finally wet a finger and smeared part of the transparency, we thought "Aaaah! He's ruining it! But then we all got down on the floor, started spitting on the transparency and turned our hands blue from wiping off the ink."

Reactions of the stores in the Galleria varied. One store not involved with the Hunt called the Hunt crisis line and asked Engelberg what they were supposed to do when participants entered the store.

Other stores made up their own clues. "Chris Logar and I went into Christy's Fresh Cinnamon Rolls, following one of the possible clues. We went up to a salesclerk and [in accordance to the task sheet] said, 'Quit following us in your spaceship and spreading rumors that we're crazy.' He asked us to repeat it, so we did, then asked me to lean forward. He leaned across the counter as well and did the 'do you feel boxed in, drawn out? These are signs of mental illness,' compete with hand gestures. Chris and I looked at him funny, said thank you and left," Chris Robinson said.

"The girl who was the most timid on our team was picked to fulfill one embarrassing ask. She had to go into Circus World and ask the cashier for a condom for a Ken doll. When she went in, two little kids were buying toys. So she whispered her request into the clerks' ear. He was new on the shift, and didn't know what was going on. He stammered, 'do they make those? I think we're out.' We thought it was a false lead, walked out and were confused. We were run down 100 feet later by another cashier who figured out what was going on and gave us the clue we wanted," Robinson said.

Free Entertainment

Some of the participating stores became actively involved with forcing the teams to fulfill the tasks. "One team member did not know the words to the McDonald's song about two all-beef patties, special sauce, etc., so she said she'd mouth the words and fake it. The woman behind the counter caught on and made us sing it over again, with that girl in the middle, singing the loudest." Leezie Kim said.

"When we went into Gap Kids, I was supposed to ask for socks using only hands gestures and motions. One group was there before us. The girl pointed at socks, then her feet and received her clue. No problem. Then it was my turn. I did the same thing-and the lady laughed and gave me a hard time because she knew exactly what I wanted. She asked me what color and size, and I had to answer all of these questions without speaking," Chris Logar said.

FOX IN SOX Chris Logar cannot speak to the salesclerk while asking for socks at Gap kids.

RANDALL'S SCANDAL Chad Carson eyes a tantalizing clue at Randall's.

The second puzzle began with a cryptogram and audio tape, but this was no normal cryptogram - it was backwards. The cryptogram suggested listening to the ninth and forty sixth words in the imitation Gregorian chant of "Yakety Yak," "you" and "to." Included in the hunt packet was a coordinate map of Houston. The teams went to the store at coordinates "U-2," Paper, Etc., where they received a helium balloon. When they popped the balloon, a piece of paper with instructions to go to a grocery store fell out. (A Randall's was next door.) The computerized map and recipe file at Randall's contained the next Snickleberry juice ingredient.

The third puzzle, after a jaunt to the library, was a rebus, a series of pictures and letters that the solver adds and subtracts to create words.

EXAMPLE REBUS Solution later in story.

But, like the cryptogram, this had an extra turn. Each team needed to find and cross out all of the words on an accompanying sheet, then combine remaining letters and pictures to obtain the next part of the clue. The solution sent the teams to the Rice stadium, where they needed to trace out the rebus pattern on an additional sheet to discover the Snickleberry juice ingredient.

Coordinator Dave Broman said, "Initially we had planned to have the letters on the sheet mapped out on the stadium field in a grid. When we laid the tape down the ground was wet but some of the tape was still sticking. The grid looked fine. Even 45 minutes later, it looked fine. But the next morning, it was all torn up-probably due to the rain and wind."

Carnival Giveaway

TOSS UP Bowie Hinger juggles balls and taunts teams while Hunt participants try to solve the carnival puzzles and have their fortune told at the Wyndham Warwick Hotel's Princess Room.

The title of the fourth puzzle gave its location away. The questions following were to be the clues, "Seek the Princess when you arrive. What does the man do who fails to lose? What do they call the man who is stupid? What cosmological tranquillity is broken, and peace no longer exists, what kind of state are we in? What's the name of that, you know, that white stringy thing on the top of a candle that you light with a match or lighter?" However, participants didn't need to struggle with this one: just above these questions was "Wyndham Warwick Puzzle." The groups went to the hotel to the Princess room, where a gypsy carnival was in progress, planned by Bowie Hinger.

Participants first bought a bag of popcorn (and just happened to find a metal cookie cutter in the bottom of the bag). To have their fortune told, they had to first win a coin by spelling out "C-O-I-N" on the ring toss. The fortune teller handed out a puzzle, which gave the group additional clues. Finally, the group entered the side show and placed the cookie cutter in a stencil on the wall. Upon this connection, a laser turned on and teams could direct the laser onto various mirrors to discover the next Snickleberry juice ingredient.

AND THEN THERE WAS LIGHT Aided by a reflected laser, hunt team The Screaming Orgasmics finds the next Snickleberry juice ingredient.

Fortune teller Med Kelley said it was amazing to watch the organization in the different teams. "One team was in and out of this puzzle in under ten minutes max. They cane in, split up to analyze the different possible puzzles, regrouped and went on in their plan of attack. After that they were really just good puzzles solvers."

But not all of the teams were as efficient, Kelley said. "A lot of the groups came up to me, the fortune teller, and thought that I'd be giving hints to their fortune with the puzzle."

Some of the groups tried to make the puzzles more difficult than they actually were. "One of the groups kept saying [the ring toss] can't be that easy and saying, 'shouldn't we be standing further back?'" Hinger said.

A Pneumatic Player Harmonica??!?

After finishing all four puzzles, the teams returned to Rice to work on the bonus puzzle. Each team received a card and hole punch, and was shown two posters with numbered animals on them. The object was to punch out the numbers of the animals from the bonus clues. The coordinators showed each team into a room with a LEGO pneumatic player harmonica built by O'Neil and Erik Daniel (complete with compressed air tank) and told, "You have two minutes."

As the team fed their card through the contraption, notes correlating to the numbers punched were played. The theme played was the fanfare from horse races.

Teams returned outside, looked on various posters until they found a horserace ad, and chose the corresponding final Snickleberry ingredient. The teams then turned in their list of ingredients and waited.

Each team was given a Mac disk and a numerical crossword puzzle and instructed to listen to a clue at 9:15 on FM 107.5. At 9:15, teams began listening for the magic word: magazine. The disk produced mathematical problems to solve the crossword and find the phone number necessary to complete the Hunt.

When the teams called, they received the address of the post-Hunt party, at Rodney's in the Village, where Hunt organizers presented the awards and a skit demonstrating the making of Snickleberry Juice.

"The party was the greatest part for the organizers. We hadn't slept in 72 hours and we didn't have time to do anything except work on the Hunt. Then when people started coming back together for the party, we began to hear all the stories. It's the strangest feeling to plan something for six months and then at 12 noon, think 'it's out of my hands.' We had a lot of fun coming up with the Galleria tasks. We had an inside joke about the Toblerone bar from last year," O'Neil said.

He anticipates being involved with the Hunt again next year. "I feel like this is my thing. I founded this with a lot of help from other people and I want to see it through so it can be a decisive success."

Diverse Groups

Some teams took the puzzle more seriously that others. "Our advantage was we had a really diverse team," said Amy Nagy. "Our team name was [named], 'Four Real Majors and a Flake.' The real contest was the debate about whose major was flaky. We had an engineer, math sci, music, and economist. We covered all grounds, this diversity helped because most other teams were science majors. The music major helped especially in the bonus puzzle because she was able to remember the notes exactly so we could figure out the song later. It was like having our own tape recorder."

"Our group came prepared. We had everything from phone books to scissors and tape, from three calculators to a dictionary, thesaurus and periodic table. We even had the Columbia Concise Encyclopedia," Carson said.

Some groups adopted a lackadaisical attitude. "We didn't pick people because we thought 'He's a good puzzle solver; He's a great math student.' Our only criteria was liking puzzles," Phillips said.

The competition instigated tension in some teams. "I loved how our group fought over where the middle of the car was and where the puzzle book should be on the way to make Xerox copies of the puzzles. Then, the puzzles also created a lot of unity. We'd be happy whenever we'd solve one. At one point we were all so disappointed when we thought we were ahead of everyone else, then found out that 24 groups out of 30 had been there before us," Chris Logar said.

A few of the groups attempted to solve the final puzzle early by cracking the code on the disk.

O'Neil strongly discouraged unethical behavior. "Our goal was to make it impossible to cheat. We trusted that anyone who would find a way to cheat wouldn't do that. One of the really sharp teams could have given themselves and advantage, but didn't and we're thankful that they played by their honor."

"Some of the groups were comp geeks because they tried to break into the disk before 9:15. The Hunt is a game and the organizers designed it so everyone would start at the same time." Nagy said.

"We did not want to encourage speeding-it isn't safe. We wanted to make sure than people would not receive their final clue then race all over Houston to solve it." Mark Engelberg said. "Most of the stores were extremely responsive. We were not turned down by anyone except the government. We tried to get some cooperation from the Park and Recreation Department and zoo, but they're not into things like this." Engelberg said.

Ellinger plans on participating in the Hunt next year, for the third time. "After being so hard last year, the Hunt needed to be solvable this year. For that reason, they couldn't include any difficult turns. But next year they can. And I hope that they do. One of walking around campus saying, "Where in the hell is this statue without any breasts?"

The answer to the rebus is can + gamma + screw - m - mask + sink - ink = cangarews, or kangaroos.