Politics and Puzzles, minus the politics

Yesterday was the third annual Washington Post Hunt, a giant puzzlefest put together by the writer Dave Barry and his friends. As always, the event consisted of five large and theatrical puzzles, none of which were particularly hard, and then a final puzzle that was VERY hard. This year, in fact, that final puzzle skated past very hard into the land of Completely Ridiculous, requiring mental leaps that I honestly don’t think I’d have made in a month. But other people did make those leaps, which is why they won and we did not. A hearty congratulations is in order to my friend Todd Etter, whose team placed second. This is not the first time they’ve been up on stage at the end of these things — they won one year and I believe they came in second another time, too. They are a puzzling force to be reckoned with, or possibly a team that needs to have something slipped into their drinks.

Let’s get right to the puzzles! As usual, the answer to each puzzle was a number, which corresponded to a clue in the Clue Guide, included in that morning’s newspaper:

Sculptures: We arrived at the park to see a row of abstract scupltures in assorted geometric shapes. Or, anyway, I gather we were supposed to think they were abstract sculptures. To be honest, every single member of my team looked at those sculptures and recognized immediately they were the top half of various letters, and those letters spelled out the words FIVE HUNDRED. We all saw this so quickly that the puzzlemakers may as well have simply have erected a sculpture of the actual number — 500 — and given us the answer outright.

But here’s the problem: If you walked into a park and saw a giant papier-mâché 500 sitting there, would you think that was the answer to the puzzle? No, you’d think that was the puzzle itself, and you then had to figure out the answer. Thus it was with the half-letters. Whatever the answer was, surely it wasn’t 500. Someone suggested that the answer had to be 250. And I still think this is a MUCH BETTER answer than the actual answer… 250 wasn’t in the clue guide, and 500 was. So we shrugged in puzzlement and agreed that we had the answer after all. Next.

Feet: More sculptures, this time in the form of many sets of plaster feet. Hundreds and hundreds of plaster feet were laid out on some steps in a small tree-lined plaza. I counted them and got 555 1/2. My friend Kevin recognized immediately that this was the height of the Washington Monument. (“Actually,” he corrected, “it’s 555.5.”) I wondered if even the average DC resident knew this, but another teammate found that fact reiterated in a cartoon in the clue guide. The cartoon showed the monument and the various ways people choose to beat the summer sun. One of the people in the cartoon was a man in a Dodger’s baseball uniform, holding a large purple umbrella. “Aha!” said a cartoon balloon. “It appears this man has the answer.” So we schlepped to the Washington Monument, found that very same man with the purple umbrella, and another puzzle was solved.

Speech: This was apparently the hardest puzzle of the day, but we solved it in pretty short order. A staff member droned a long, rambling speech on various topics into a microphone, while next to him a second staff member provided “interpretation for the clueless.” This interpreter was not using American Sign Language; rather, she was improvising a bunch of random oddball dance moves. There was only one move she did repeatedly: When the speaker said, “The solution is clear,” as he did several times, she threw both arms over her head twice in a gesture that clearly meant, “Touchdown!” That her shirt was black-and-white striped, like a referee, only helped bring her message across.

And so the answer had to be… uh, 12? Two touchdowns = 6×2 = 12? Sure, except 12 wasn’t in the clue guide. 14 was, but that didn’t make sense. Touchdowns are worth seven only after the team kicks the extra point. Finally we figured out not to add the two numbers but to simply place them side by side: The answer was 66.

Comic Strip: A large banner (though not large enough, considering the crowds) was printed with an out-of-order comic strip. Each panel was numbered, and I guess the puzzlemakers expected us to mentally organize them in numerical order. This did not even occur to us. We reassembled the comic so that it simply made sense, and then wrote down the numbers in that same order. Seven of them. Aha: A phone number. We called it, and were told to count the number of cats in a particular frame. Our toughest step on this puzzle was debating whether there 13 or 14 cats; sneakily, even nastily, both numbers were in the clue guide. We finally settled on the correct answer, 13.

Admit One: We were handed a pass that said “Admit One To The Hunt Bar.” On the pass was a bar code that was clearly not really a bar code: It was one of those puzzles where the letters are written really thin, and you have to hold it at a severe angle to see what it says. The message said “Nineteen Plus.” Great. 19 plus what? We didn’t know. We solved all the other puzzles, had lunch, and only after all that did we spot, on the map, an area marked “BAR.” Well, duh. We ran there and received a card that said that only those wearing shoes could receive service. Were we wearing shoes? How many shoes were we wearing? So, 19+2=21, and we were done.

And now, the final puzzle: But first, a word about me being stupid. Early in the day, I got it into my head that a particular direction on the map was “thataway” when in fact it was “thisaway,” and no matter how many times I tried to make the necessary mental adjustment, I just couldn’t do it. I’m usually pretty good at reading maps, but today I had a form of temporary, specialized dyslexia. Whatever direction I started walking, I had to be called back by my teammates so that we could go the right way, which was the opposite of where I’d been headed.

And so, for the final clue, we were presented with pictures of an EAR, a NUT, and a STAR, and then a juggler attempted to juggle these pictures, but it was windy and the pictures were heavy, so he never exactly did it, but we more than got the point. Anagramming EAR, NUT, and STAR gets you the word RESTAURANT, and there was a spot labeled as such on the map, and we were OFF AND RUNNING, with me in the lead, which given the previous paragraph could only lead to disaster.

Yes, I turned right instead of left, and yes it took a couple of blocks for me to see my mistake through the haze of adrenaline. Other teammates, thankfully, got to the restaurant, and received a silly menu with a bunch of disgusting dishes. “We recommend the seafood,” we were told.

It took a while for us all to find each other in the mob scene, but when we did, we settled in to solve the puzzle and immediately got nowhere. Without getting too much into our erroneous thinking, we found ourselves trying to find eels on the map, but there weren’t any. It was clear we had made a mistake, but we could not imagine how or when, so we went back to the mainstage to hear how this damn thing worked.

There were seven seafood dishes, and each had a price: Another phone number! D’oh! We should have noticed that. When you called it, you got a message: “No, we meant the C Food!” There were a number of dishes on the menu starting with C. It was these dishes you had to use in coordination with the clues from the earlier puzzles. One of these was “B 4 u can win, u must go to the second.” The second C-dish was a “Casserole of dog.” Looking for a dog on the map was no good; it wasn’t there, any more than the eels were. Here’s the mental leap I would never have made: You needed to go to map coordinates K9 (“canine”). There you found a Hunt representative, and using the last couple of clues (handing her the menu and saying “heehaw!” — don’t ask, it’s not important) made you the winner.

All in all, not a bad Hunt. At no point did I say, “Oh, that was EXCELLENT!” and start tap dancing with joy, but the puzzles were a nice bunch, with not a clunker in the group. And of course it’s always a pleasure hanging out with my puzzle friends. My team was well-balanced, with everybody solving at least a part of something. And then there was hanging out afterwards with still more fun folks, trading puzzles and telling stories.

Then I walked back to my hotel and slept for ten hours.