Appropriate clothes and gear.
The Hunt goes on, rain or shine.
2012 Post Hunt: Let’s go!
Illustration by Kagan McLeod
A sense of humor. The Hunt is a competition, but it is mostly just nuts. An appreciation of the absurd will go a long way to making the Hunt fun for all, even if you lose, which, let’s face it, you will.
But that doesn’t mean you won’t have fun or even solve some of the puzzles. We’re feeling generous, so here’s a tip: This year as always, your greatest enemy will be linear thinking, except in the technical sense that if we pull a 180 on you, it is, by geometric theorem, still “linear.”
How to Begin
A nswer the Opening Questions in Sunday’s Magazine. They are painstakingly engineered to be stupid but also easy, like Paris Hilton. They’re designed to be solvable by anyone who has ever achieved a body temperature of 98.6, which pretty much means they’ll prove difficult only for dogs, cats, lizards and, possibly, Paris Hilton. Once you’ve got the answers, get down to Franklin Square Park before noon.
The Locations of the
Five Hunt Puzzles
At noon, Hunt designers Dave Barry, Gene Weingarten and Tom Shroder will be onstage in Franklin Square Park to deliver the aptly named Noon Clue. This simply consists of five numbers, which, combined with the five letter answers for the Opening Questions, will provide the Hunt Map coordinates of all five Hunt Puzzles. Franklin Square Park, bordered by 13th, 14th, K and I streets NW, is easily accessible by Metro (it’s directly catty-corner from the McPherson Square Metro 14th Street exit). All the Hunt puzzles are within walking distance of the park, and easy to locate using the Hunt Map. You can visit the puzzles in any order you wish.
You will know the puzzles when you encounter them. No puzzle sites are hidden or hard to see. You will not have to go into any buildings to solve a puzzle. It is important to note that for several of the puzzles, the initial location is only a starting point. To solve the puzzle, you will have to go elsewhere, “elsewhere” being a place to be determined by you based on hints we will give. Here’s a hint right now: Don’t blindly follow People Who Seem To Know What They Are Doing. Such people, the ones who preen and strut around with confidence, are almost invariably wrong.
Solving the Puzzles
The most important thing to know about solving Hunt puzzles is this: THE ANSWER IS ALWAYS A NUMBER. Since the very first Hunt (late Pleistocene) we have shouted this fact in capital letters. That’s how crucial it is. Study the Puzzle until you think you’ve figured out what the number is. Then go to the numbered list of clues in the Magazine. If the number you guessed doesn’t match the number of one of the clues on that list, your guess is wrong. If it does match, it may still be wrong, but your chances are a lot better. We’ve designed the Puzzles so that when you solve one, it’s an “aha!” moment, and you’ll have a strong sense that you are right.
If you can’t solve a Puzzle in a reasonable time, go on to the next. There’s plenty of time to double back later. You’ll have until ten minutes to three, when we start to disassemble the Puzzles. At that point, you should return to the main stage. Be sure you get there by three o’clock.
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