Chinese New Year Treasure Hunt Photos and Wrapup
The weather actually turned out to be pretty good Saturday night as The Smoking GNU, temporarily renamed The Smoking Rat in honor of the Year of the Rat, took to the San Francisco streets to search for plaques and grates. It rained hard at first, but by the time we had located all but one of the clues, it was barely drizzling; the thunderstorm that was supposed to attack Northern California seemed to have fizzled.
I didn't take as many pictures as I wanted, mostly since in just about every location, other teams gathered around trying to find locations we had just found, and I didn't want to spoil their fun.
This was Dan's first time on our team and Eric and Linda's second. When we got to Justin Herman Plaza, we met one of Linda's oldest friends, Melanie, along with her brother and/or friend, another Scott, who were looking for a team to join, so The Smoking Rat grew to seven players that day. Eric had asked Tory (of Mythbusters fame) to join us, but apparently unless the event requires opening an elevator in mid-flight, he wasn't up for it. ;)
We played in the "Regular" category, even though it was our first time in the Treasure Hunt. Considering that we ended up only completing 13 of the 16 clues, maybe trying as "Beginners" would have allowed us to get into Jayson Wechter's mindset quicker.
After we opened our clue pack, we solved and located all but two of the clues, marked them out on the map, and plotted our route, planning on solving the other two while walking (turned out to be fairly difficult). Eric had borrowed a GPS unit from work, but we never ended up using it, using him instead (we got him to do the voice on a few occasions too).
So we hit Gate B at the ferry, a figure skating statue in front of the Punch Line comedy club, The Old Ship Saloon, a telephone booth on Stockton, a barbershop across from St. Peter & Paul Church, and more. One place we found almost by accident: The clue indicated that we needed to find an alley with the word "tar" in it (but that's a lot of streets to look through) which would be across from something that happens every 29.5 days. We figured on of the moon phases, but that didn't help us figure out the street. On our way to another clue, we went through a street with a large number of Chinese restraunts on it, and I suddenly remembered a "New Moon" Chinese food restraunt in Santa Rosa, so I told everyone to be on the lookout for such a place. I figured it was a long shot, but within a few minutes, we spotted a "New Moon" restraunt across the street from Stark alley.
We did run into some difficulties along the way. The problem with riddles is that there is not always an exact solution, which is why being in the developer's mindset is so important. One example that really slowed us down was clue #3, which read in part, "If you follow customs here, $20 will give you a charge." We correctly figured that we needed to go to the U.S. Customs building, but figured that the second half meant that we needed to go to an ATM (which gives out $20 dollar bills and, if you're not a member of that bank, will charge you for it). There were two or three ATMs around the Customs building, none of which lead us in the right direction. Instead we were supposed to think of Jackson (on the $20 bill) and Battery (the charge), which we only found out after reading the solutions yesterday.
The one that really stymied us was Clue #15. We came nowhere close to solving it at any point that night. It read, in part:
Well, we tried combinging "Empire State Building" in ways that would match up with the letters (a la EMPIRE), expecting words to appear that would give us cross streets. Nothing came of it. We found out that the next day that the letters were supposed to represent a stickshift (despite being letters for an automatic), the "stationary" part of which was "park". Oh well.
Overall, we had a good time, even in spite of the weather and sore feet. Afterwards, we discussed whether we'd do it again next year. Although we haven't ruled it out, three of us are on tight budgets, so the cost of tickets and parking may keep us from joining again next year.
I didn't take as many pictures as I wanted, mostly since in just about every location, other teams gathered around trying to find locations we had just found, and I didn't want to spoil their fun.
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| LTR: me, Given, Dan, Linda, and Eric (View all photos) |
This was Dan's first time on our team and Eric and Linda's second. When we got to Justin Herman Plaza, we met one of Linda's oldest friends, Melanie, along with her brother and/or friend, another Scott, who were looking for a team to join, so The Smoking Rat grew to seven players that day. Eric had asked Tory (of Mythbusters fame) to join us, but apparently unless the event requires opening an elevator in mid-flight, he wasn't up for it. ;)
We played in the "Regular" category, even though it was our first time in the Treasure Hunt. Considering that we ended up only completing 13 of the 16 clues, maybe trying as "Beginners" would have allowed us to get into Jayson Wechter's mindset quicker.
After we opened our clue pack, we solved and located all but two of the clues, marked them out on the map, and plotted our route, planning on solving the other two while walking (turned out to be fairly difficult). Eric had borrowed a GPS unit from work, but we never ended up using it, using him instead (we got him to do the voice on a few occasions too).
So we hit Gate B at the ferry, a figure skating statue in front of the Punch Line comedy club, The Old Ship Saloon, a telephone booth on Stockton, a barbershop across from St. Peter & Paul Church, and more. One place we found almost by accident: The clue indicated that we needed to find an alley with the word "tar" in it (but that's a lot of streets to look through) which would be across from something that happens every 29.5 days. We figured on of the moon phases, but that didn't help us figure out the street. On our way to another clue, we went through a street with a large number of Chinese restraunts on it, and I suddenly remembered a "New Moon" Chinese food restraunt in Santa Rosa, so I told everyone to be on the lookout for such a place. I figured it was a long shot, but within a few minutes, we spotted a "New Moon" restraunt across the street from Stark alley.
We did run into some difficulties along the way. The problem with riddles is that there is not always an exact solution, which is why being in the developer's mindset is so important. One example that really slowed us down was clue #3, which read in part, "If you follow customs here, $20 will give you a charge." We correctly figured that we needed to go to the U.S. Customs building, but figured that the second half meant that we needed to go to an ATM (which gives out $20 dollar bills and, if you're not a member of that bank, will charge you for it). There were two or three ATMs around the Customs building, none of which lead us in the right direction. Instead we were supposed to think of Jackson (on the $20 bill) and Battery (the charge), which we only found out after reading the solutions yesterday.
The one that really stymied us was Clue #15. We came nowhere close to solving it at any point that night. It read, in part:
Combine the name of the Big Apple's high point (where a fictional King briefly reigned with the stationary part of
P R
N
D L
Well, we tried combinging "Empire State Building" in ways that would match up with the letters (a la EMPIRE), expecting words to appear that would give us cross streets. Nothing came of it. We found out that the next day that the letters were supposed to represent a stickshift (despite being letters for an automatic), the "stationary" part of which was "park". Oh well.
Overall, we had a good time, even in spite of the weather and sore feet. Afterwards, we discussed whether we'd do it again next year. Although we haven't ruled it out, three of us are on tight budgets, so the cost of tickets and parking may keep us from joining again next year.
Labels: Chinese New Year Treasure Hunt, photos, wrapup
posted by Skott at 8:31 AM
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