Sunday, October 26, 2008

Herald Hunt and the Week in Review

So yesterday I know I said there was nothing new. Really I just hadn't downloaded all the photos off my camera yet (this will be a somewhat picture heavy post).

Today was the Herald Hunt. I have only participated twice, but I have to say it is one of the things I will really miss in Miami. If you are on a good team it is a wacky good time. And it is always a good opportunity to see new neighborhoods in Miami. And my team got to have a one on one conversation with Dave Barry when he ran into us on the hunt. We were one of the team name finalists and we chatted briefly about that (and gave him a hard time for not picking us). There is a contest for the best team name every year and we came close. We were on a team with some good friends of ours from our homebrewing club, here is our T-shirt, featuring our team name.
It got great notice as we walked around.
The Herald Hunt clues, to solve are ridiculous and insidious (what else would you expect from the mind of Dave Barry). For instance, this year one clue started like this:

Here's a side view.

There were 12 panels. As you look at them, Julie Andrews (courtesy of a portable sound system, not in person) is singing "Doe a deer a female deer, Rey a drop of golden sun..." etc. They go through the whole scale (though NOT to the full octave, just the seven notes). It turns out (if you look closely at those pictures) that the notes correspond to some of the pictures. There are 4 lines of three pictures. And the first line of three is a star, a blank and a list of 16 repetitions of the word "oz." (that would be 16 ounces or 1 pound....Can you see where this is going yet.....go look at your telephone key pad......)












Did you solve it? The set up of the photos was the telephone keypad. If you track the song in order, it is a telephone number. You dial this number, it rings the J. Andrews travel agency. There is an advertisement for this travel agency in your map booklet. It lists flights and their prices. But the insanity doesn't stop here. The phone message says "you have received prize code 927." 927 is not one of your price options. However, if you go back to your crazy phone keypad you discovered and reconvert back into the song you get LA-FA-RE......or L.A. Fare (Los Angeles being one of the cities in the advertiesment) and the price is the answer to the clue...

This is the kind of thinking insanity that it takes to solve these puzzles. (we were one of the first teams to nail that clue).

In the end we got three out of the five clues you need to solve the "end-game" clue...and considering the circumstances, we consider this a victory (some other friends of ours got 1 of 5, and some people didn't get any). The full breakdown of clues and solutions can be found here. Wacky Good times.


I have been knitting some (and spinning, but no pictures). A while back I finished the body of my latest sweater, here is the first sleeve done.

And because the sleeve gets to a "non-portable" stage, I have been working on some new socks from leftover yarn.


Our vegetable plants are growing well, they will be replanted tonite and be put out tomorrow, and to complete our "produce your own" lifestyle, Russell made his own All beef Hot Dogs this week.

For those who are somewhat disturbed by this, I assure you they are 100% recognizable cuts of beef (unlike grocery store hot dogs), delicious and less salty and no funky chemical preservatives, one of the best hot dogs I have ever had!

I'm off to work on some writing research.

1 comment:

Fran said...

I enjoyed all your news and pictures. I see that you are reading what our family calls "the Peabody books." Don't you love them? We've all read the whole set.