Y2K Treasure Hunt

The adventure began shortly after 1:30pm when Julian crawled over to an ice bucket and removed the lid. This revealed several pieces of paper taped to the inside.

On inspection, there were many identical handouts which gave the ground rules for the events to come. Players were also told that they needed to solve the handout to get the first official puzzle.

Once that was accomplished, the crossword puzzles were found. Everyone had the same grid and most of the same clues, but the clues were not numbered and seemed to be in random order. Eventually, the puzzle was solved and people split into two groups to do the next puzzle.

Next were odd men out, the usual sixteen collections of four items. Each sheet had the same items, but with different key letters. Once the sets were solved, the groups had to figure out the puzzle locations. Some of the sheets spelled out names of playing cards: deuces/threes/sevens/ eights/queens of diamonds. That's a flush and that group found their next puzzle by the toilet. Other sheets spelled out names of Dwarfs: Bashful/Happy/Grumpy/Dopey/Doc and either Sleepy or Sneezy. That meant that one was missing and so the group found its next clue in either a bed or a box of tissues.

At this point the three groups diverged. This writeup will be a bit of an amalgam of what happened with the three groups. But one thing each group had in common was that they found a series of numbered slips of paper containing clues for a logic puzzle. A sign on the fridge advertised a "Havdalah Special" from Avram's House of Pizza, and the solvers were told that they would need to determine what pizzas to order.

The Blue group's next puzzle led us outside for an eccentric orienteering walk. Along the way, we saw Julian at the park. After surviving a series of bad jokes, we arrived at an artwork and answered a series of questions about it, each of which gave a letter in the final answer.

This led to a collection of sequences, which was probably too hard of a puzzle. It was good to have an interruption. Each sequence was associated with an instruction, such as "reverse the order of the first seven letters." Once the missing numbers were found in each sequence, the instructions could be ordered based on their associated number. Now the instructions could be followed (though that took some doing itself), leading to a URL, slightly ambiguously.

Guessing wrong on the URL led to a cryptogram (an easy one, at least) which, when solved, informed the reader of what they should have done differently to get the correct URL.

Finally, entering the correct URL presented a list of fifty short words in two columns, with stars next to some of them. We were saved from copying down the list for each solver by the presence of a Print link on the page. Clicking this told us to open a drawer in the computer desk, where we found several copies of the puzzle.

This was more of an "aha" puzzle than the slog it out variety, and after the requisite insights, the answer was easily read off. We were led to a small slip of paper which told us to ask the Red team some questions.

We went upstairs to the Red room, which was decorated (as were all of the teams' solving areas) with balloons, colored candy, and other items. After asking lots of questions and getting mysterious answers, one team member divined the secret location.

Here we found more logic puzzle clues, but no other puzzle. It was time to combine forces (and clues) with the other teams and solve the puzzle. There was a glitch here, which we have not yet tracked down to a composing or solving error, but eventually the two pizzas were delivered. A good thing, because we were plenty hungry!

Alas, the pizza box contained not pizzas, but jigsaw puzzles. And the two of them had been carelessly (:-)) mixed together. The pieces included ones shaped like Dave & Shari's initials: SJ © DM, which was an indication of what the puzzle depicted (both puzzles were identical)--their chuppah. Y2K was also present, as ever through this year's Hunt.

Behind the chuppah was a purple envelope with a puzzle. Since there had been no purple team, people regrouped and some went off to the purple room (it seems that some elves had redecorated the red room). Others stayed behind to figure out what to do about the half-dozen small rectangular holes in the puzzles. It turned out that by placing the puzzle over the crossword grid, a word would appear. One puzzle led to the word Oregano and the other to Nathan. In the spice cabinet, behind the oregano, was an orange envelope. But Nathan Glasser disclaimed any knowledge. Of course, the house was on Nathan St. and one of the street signs had a yellow envelope attached, in which, coincidentally, was Nathan's puzzle.

This puzzle consisted of a series of phrases, each preceded by a two-digit number. Not much could be done with this without the information that each phrase could be anagrammed into the name of a historical event which took place in the specified year (this being non-Y2K compliant, we had to guess the century) with a letter left over. After much work, inspiration, and slogging through the almanac, we came up with the answer and went into the kitchen to get the next puzzle.

Matt Stone's double crostic was next. This was also non-Y2K compliant, but in a different way--all Ys, 2s, and Ks were left out of the puzzle. The Ys and Ks added only a slight amount to the difficulty, but we couldn't tell if key number 18, for example, was truly 18 or perhaps 128, 182, or 218. Those who know Matt were not surprised that the answer had a cinematic theme.

Next we were given a sheet of paper with a hideous algebraic formula containing the letters from A to Z, and stamped "Y2K Compliant" (for a change!). For each letter, there was a clue, such as
  F. Size of shoes for a miner's daughter.
By determining the numeric answer for each clue, the value of the entire expression could be determined, leading to a location in the house where a paint-by-number puzzle was waiting.

Once all three teams had solved their puzzles, combining the solutions with the help (?) of a bad pun soon led back to the child's bed where the hunt started, and to the acknowledgments and a large piece of chocolate, which was shared by the hungry solvers.