BATH 4 Pictures and Experiences (Part 1)

(There is the possibility that BATH4 would be run again. In which case, there could be spoilers here.)

BATH 4: DIY. Much to our surprise, we took 2nd! And took pictures! And (some) people like our puzzle! And by our puzzle, I mean Eric Prestemon's. But that's, as Alton Brown might say, another post.

Joining Given, Jonathan, Eric, and myself, were Rob ("You guys only invite me cuz I own a van") and Mark, his second hunt and first "public" one. It was a lot of fun, with some good puzzles and a few that weren't to our liking. Mark was especially frustrated with one puzzle, thought to be fair, we were all frustrated with it.

Our first puzzle had us walking around AT&T park, matching photos to points on a map. It was a good puzzle to get us started. Jonathan got some good-natured ribbing about his inability to recognize Willie May's statue from behind and Mark and Rob threatened to solder a needle to Barry Bonds' arm on his plaque.

Deciding to move around the city (somewhat) clockwise, we next visited coed astronomy's site, where we filtered a series of tiles through a decision tree. When we got the answer and were heading away in the van, coed astronomy asked us to sing the answer. Apparently, I lead a sheltered life, since I had no real recollection of the song and wondered what the heck my teammates were singing. A darned good puzzle, and probably the one that made best use of its environment.

We stopped at a Taco Bell to tackle Mystic Fish's excellent word-connection puzzle, which often forced compound words out of non-compounded words (such as connecting "prose" and "cute"). Bit by bit, we got a dome built and saw the directions around the edge leading us to a play park. Which had a climbing dome. Which we climbed, got locations on the mini-dome, took words, found pun directions, and solved. Very fun, very clever puzzle. It got our vote for best puzzle in the end.

Next, we stopped at a pizza place that Rob said was where he went 30 years ago for pizza while in college. There, we solved Ian's fun portable puzzle and got a receipt out of it. We were able to finish the puzzle before finishing the pizza... but that includes baking time.

We drove further south to the next sector on our list. We were to find a gray Cadillac after solving a puzzle where different names were hidden in sentences. At first they appeared to be countries, with a few odd ones thrown in. Then Eric, looking at his laminated map of the City, saw that they were all street names within a certain grid. After getting all the street names out of the puzzle, we realized two were missing, so we drove to where they crossed.

We looked all over the four blocks adjacent to that corner, but did not spot a single Cadillac. Mark got out of the van to scout on foot. "Wouldn't it be funny," I told my remaining teammates, "If it were on that mural on the playground?" I was only 10% serious; it seemed an unlikely subject for a grade school mural. But when Mark rejoined us a bit later, he confirmed my little joke. The license plate was our answer.

Coming soon: A mall, a stall, and jump off a wall.