BATH 4 Experiences, Pt. 2

Skipping past our own sector, we headed towards the Burninator's clue at Stonestown Galleria. First, we had to solve twenty-six clues that generally were play-on-word descriptions of stores at said mall. We got some of them from a list on the web site, more from the store directory (after surviving the parking), and eventually got all but two or three by wandering the mall itself. We tried splitting up into two teams, but seemed to end up doing redundant checks instead of solving faster.

All during the hunt, obviously, Eric was fielding hint requests and answer confirmations. The most common hint was "Look at the flavor text." The first team to solve it was Bloodied by Science, who's comment that Eric's puzzle had a very satisfying conclusion certainly bolstered our confidence that we'd made the right choice in going with his puzzle over the one Jonathan and I had been working on.

One response had kind of worried us, though: Jesse of loxi (aka Lowkey and Desert Taxi, aka Ghost Patrol GC) called and confirmed their answer and kind of abruptly hung up. "I guess they didn't like it very much," Eric said with a sigh.

At the mall, though, we ran into loxi in the food court and they assured us that they had enjoyed the puzzle. "You don't have to be so cold about it," they had joked to him after he hung up. I'm guessing it was just one of those times where the vocal tone doesn't always match the emotions (something I have to watch out for myself). But it was all good.

We finished up the mall clue a short while later. It had felt like a huge time sink, but in reality we still had five hours, maybe more, to finish off the three remaining clues. No problem, we could take our time, relax, and try and power through any blockages we might come across.

Which we hit fairly quickly. The next clue was in the Sunset District. It was divided into three sub-clues, with a page full of flavor text describing three murders done by vampires. Along with those were several folded pieces of small paper in a bag labeled "Hints". A discussion broke out as to whether these were the equivalent of the a hint line and whether they were "real" hints or just part of the puzzle. We called the Longshots and asked, and their answer made us think they were real hints that would cost us. This turned out to be a huge mistake on our part.

Each of the clues indicated that it was related to one of the murders at the corner of two cross-streets. The clues looked incomplete, so our obvious assumption was that we needed to be at those locations to solve. We went to each one in turn and found absolutely nothing. This was discouraging. Eric had kind of solved the one similar to a word jumble (later it turned out he'd only half-solved it), and the other two we attacked at many different angles. None of them worked. But we didn't look at the paper hints; only an hour had passed and we still had plenty of time. We would not take a hint.

A half hour later, only a little progress had been made. Jonathan had solved the other half of the word jumble-ish sub-clue and it gave us a location. Sensing we needed to connect the location of the murder and the solve location, Rob decided to drive along that path to see if anything jumped out at us. What else did we have to do?

More time passed and frustration levels were high all around. Finally, I told my team that I would look at the hints. If they were something that the rest of team could eventually solve, I would recuse myself; otherwise I would reveal the hint. I opened the first one: "It is a cryptogram" it read. We had tried to solve that sub-clue as a cryptogram; however, Jonathan's crypto-solver software gave over a hundred possibilities for the title, so we pretty much permanantly discarded the idea. I told them the hint.

Solving quickly, it gave us another location, and drawing a line again gave us a point where it crossed the previous one. The clue said it could be solved with only two of the sub-clues solved, so we headed to that point. We had figured we were looking for dolphins (based on the back of each sheet), but also some wording in the flavortext lead us to think that we might be looking for a bell instead. But again, nothing was there.

While searching that location, Jonathan remarked "Why else would they give us this map if they didn't want us to draw these lines and come to this location?" And since we had already marked down that we'd taken a hint, I told him that I'd read another hint and it indicated that the map was to solve the third sub-clue. Jonathan quickly figured out that the ages and flavors on the blood-tasting menu indicated streets and avenues. Drawing along them revealed our third location. The line it gave us criss-crossed in the same location we were in, so it hadn't been much help.

We got back in the van and drove some more along each of the different paths, and then ended up wandering at random. We always kept to one side of Sunset Blvd.; the flavortext said not to be out after sunset and we had taken that as a hint to not cross to the other side.

Eventually, I took a look at the "Lair" hints and it revealed that the location was a reflection across Sunset. Our team let out a collective "grrrr" and we headed over towards the beach.

Our estimates put us at a certain location, but again, no dolphins, no bells. We began to spread out, since our "reflection" may have not been exact. We even went to far as to explore the beach, where Given said he had run into another team who said what we were looking for was on the beach (we never saw the person, but we had been misdirected by non-participants before).

Eventually, we wandered by a colorful house that had tons of animals painted on it. It looked promising, plus coed astronomy was looking around the same location. A guy hanging out in the garage, almost asleep in the back of his car, asked us what we were doing. We gave him the usual spiel and asked if he had any dolphins painted anywhere on his house. "No way man," he said in either a surfer's or toker's accent (or both). I decided to move on.

A few seconds later, however, I spotted some dolphins painted on the gate. So much for our informant's credibility. Eventually, one of us spotted the life preserver with the answer on it between a pair of dolphins on the top floor. Exhausted and relieved, we finally moved on.