The Case of the Missing Cane

by Tom Sims

"Smoke stung my eyes as I discreetly worked to free my hands. The flame inched even closer. I could feel the heat scoring my face as the mobster slowly lit the fuse."

-- taken from the diary of Detective Frank Masey, written shortly before his murder

All this for a simple jeweled cane? "The Hunt" drew 150 Rice students to the Sewall Hall Courtyard April 9, the Thursday of spring recess.

Over a lunch catered by Subway, 30 teams of about five people each were informed of their mission - to find the fictional Detective Frank Masey's cane which contained the hidden plans for a new weapon.

And so, for the third consecutive year, "The Hunt" began.

Two years ago, the idea for Rice's first "Hunt" popped up in a Brown College study lounge.

Inspired by Florida's "Tropic Hunt" and Caltech's "Senior's Barricade," four Brown college members wanted their upcoming spring recess to feature some sort of entertainment that would combine solving puzzles with a treasure/scavenger hunt.

Then-sophomores Brian O'Neil, Bowie Hinger and Harlan Howe and freshman Mark Engelberg desired a game that would suit Rice students. "We wanted something more intellectual than just a treasure hunt," Howe says. "The Hunt" was born.

The first year's puzzles were too hard ("You had to be an ultra-genius to solve them" Howe says); last year's were too easy. This year's puzzles, however, were perfect. "Almost all the groups were able to solve some of the puzzles, and very few of the groups were able to solve everything," Howe says.

Originally for Brown College memebers, "The Hunt" is becoming a tradition with all the students.

Fortunately for this year's Hunters, Detective Masey sensed the danger to his life and took measures to protect the cane.

He wrote no note revealing the cane's whereabouts. Instead, the ever-cryptic Masey left four clues, whose solutions yielded four codes, each four letters long. Feeding those clues in the Crime Computer revealed the cane's location.

The first team to phone in the location won.

Sound simple? It wasn't. "The Hunt" was designed to challenge the fittest Rice brains.

Armed with four clues, 10 hours, a car, a map and such oddities as scotch tape, a tape player and scissors, the teams set out to solve the Great Cane Caper of 1992.

Hunters dressed in official t-shirts spent their first six hours solving four preliminary puzzles. They ended up in parts of Houston many students had never entered.

In the most elaborate puzzle, a cryptogram sent teams to the Park Shopping Mall downtown, where Hunters sang their favorite Country & Western song to the employees in Y'Alls Texas Store.

For their vocal prowess, students received another puzzle and an audio cassette. Hunters gathered clues in other stores and followed a taped sound maze through the tunnels below Houston.

They surfaced at Jones Hall, went one block north and found a brightly colored grid reading "Houston - The Art Capital of the World." From this plaque and clues gathered from the shopping mall, students were able to decipher the code "GNZO."

For another of the preliminary puzzles, Hunt organizers turned a vacant shop in the Village into a mob-infested speakeasy, where Hunters confronted questionable figures such as Bubbles (played by Student Activities Director Sarah Nelson Crawford) and the gun-toting Nunzio. By speaking to the proper mobsters (one Hunter called the speakeasy "an exercise in social graces") and offering the proper incentive (Hunt Dollars), Hunters gained entry into the back room and met Mr. Big, who left another clue, "KRBY."

After gathering the other clues and taking a short dinner break, Hunters congregated in the RMC Cloisters. There, they received disks holding the final mind-teaser, a three-dimensional crossword puzzle, and scattered to MacIntosh computers across campus. The code to access the disk was announced on KTRU radio.

After inputting the four-letter codes and solving the crossword puzzle, the Crime Computer presented teams with 10 words - duck, anus, scone, seal, den, detail, pie, puff, mike, and are.

From these words, the team Global Village Idiots was the first to decipher and phone in the cane's location. At the post-Hunt party in the RMC, Global Village Idiots received $60, a $5 gift certificate to Pizzeria Uno and a box of DC Comics "Cosmic Cards."

Designing such a successful Hunt was no easy task. This year's instrumental organizers were three Brown graduating seniors - Howe, John Schwartz, and Erik Daniel. Although the four original organizers did all the work two years ago, this year's "Hunt" drew university-wide volunteers and money from nearly every residential college.

Planning for "The Hunt" began last fall. "It's really a labor of love," Howe says. "Organizing 'The Hunt' is a lot of fun. It's even more fun than participating."

About 150 Hunters would probably disagree with him.

By the way... the cane was in the tailpipe of Masey's car. (Need an explanation?)