Post Hunt 2009

Sunday was the Post Hunt 2009 and LC, ML, LT and I participated! The short answer -- the Hunt is a "quirky urban brainteaser" that had us going around downtown Washington, DC solving clues that would get us to the end. Here's the boring answer: In The Washington Post Magazine there were several number "answers" but only 5 correct ones. We had to go to 5 spots where we'd be given clues and from those clues we'd fine the 5 correct number answer. At 3pm they give you the final clue and from there you have to know where to go, be the first to solve the puzzle, get to the right spot and hand in a cellphone number. Needless to say, we weren't the winners, but we had fun trying.

Some of the clues were fairly straight forward. Statues: a Ghost next to a Canon, a vacuum cleaner, eyes and an hourglass translated to Boo-Canon or our 15th President Buchanan, for the Brits out there -- the Hoover was a reference to our 31st President Herbert Hoover, and lastly Eyes and Hour-glass (minus the glass, of course) was #34 President Dwight D. Eisenhower. While I'd love to be able to see we new what president was what number, we were aided by a president pencil that had all the presidents in order and that were found in our Hunt goodie bag. (That plus an ice-scraper. I'm still puzzling about that one.)

The hardest one was the Statues. There were two human "statues" dressed in togas and striking poses and volunteers who were handing out a clue. The clue was "According to ancient Native America legend the earth was pooped out an an Eagle PLUS It is believed to be the world's largest freestanding Polyp MINUS Little Alice loved hanging out with Uncle Henry, but she kept a sledge hammer ready in case he got frisky." This was the puzzle that really stumped us. The clue just told use it was going to be an equation of some sort. The key was the statutes. On the Hunt map there were 9 statues and if you went to all the statues there was someone with a number. You had to figure out which numbers to use. We got to the right answer, but not by going to all the statues. The final clue gave us a number to call -- and it told us an important message followed the fours. Three of the answers contained "4" or "for" or "fore" so the message was "cinematic poster next to toy" the problem was we forget the 4 in the 3rd answer which would have given us let. The final clue was "cinematic poster next to toilet" which was on the Post Hunt Map. At that location was a Star Wars poster with R2D2 and CE-P0 -- map coordinates that led to a boxer. You then had to go to that location and look for a boxer -- in this case a volunteer walking a boxer dog. So while we were going to the toys on the map, other teams won 00 and in under 30 mins. It was really quite impressive!


Still, there's always next year for Team Elphor (yes, we need to come up with a better name)!