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Your online guide to the zaniness of the 2012 Herald Hunt!
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When: 12/1/2012
Where: Peacock Park in Coconut Grove
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The Initial Puzzles
NOTE: The puzzle answers are hidden! In order to see them, you must highlight them with your mouse to reverse the text!
1. What is a Higgs boson?
B. A humpbacked shaggy-haired wild ox native to North America.
E. No, wait, that's a "bison."
L. A hypothetical, massic sub-atomic particle with zero electric charge, postulated to interact with other particles in such a way as to impart mass to them.
Answer: L
2. Which of the following events did not occur in South Florida in the past year?
C. Police shot a face-eating cannibal on the MacArthur Causeway.
F. A man died after trying to win a snake by eating cockroaches.
P. A person was arrested for allegedly enhancing women's buttocks by injecting them with super glue and Fix-a-Flat.
R. All three of these events actually occurred here in the past year.
Answer: R
3. What is the best way to determine when a traffic light has turned green?
D. There's an app for that.
G. Just continue texting until you hear honking behind you.
K. Using your eyeballs, look directly at the light.
Answer: K
4. What can the letters in "Miami-Dade County" be rearranged to spell?
A. "Am Untamed Idiocy."
C. "Idiom Nut Academy."
D. "Main Addict: Me, You."
E. All of these, as well as "I Audit Comedy, Man."
Answer: E
5. Which of the following never started at quarterback for the Miami Dolphins?
E. Cleo Lemon.
F. Sage Rosenfels.
H. Tyler Thigpen.
K. Higgs Boson.
Answer: K
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Main Puzzles (i.e. the puzzle sites)
NOTE: Puzzle answers and their descriptions are hidden! In order to see them, you must highlight them with your mouse to reverse the text!
Puzzle: The Signpost Puzzle
Location: Kenneth M. Myers Park
Description:
Hunters arriving here many signposts here, with one of them stating "The signpost puzzle starts here. Follow the HEAT To victory." Each signpost had two words on it, pointing in opposite directions. The initial signpost had Jupiter pointing in one direction, and Venus in the other, and the letter 'F' at the top.
Related puzzle photos and materials...
Puzzle Answer: 10
How to get the answer:
Hunters had to divine that their cue was "follow the heat" and follow the path the signed created when they chose the "hotter" of the two choices. By following the path that the correct answers in the maze of signs produced and collecting the letters/symmbols from the top of the signs, Hunters came up with FOURSCORE+TWO. A score is old-fashioned lingo for "20", but 82 was not a possible answer. Hunters had to realize that the sign at the start said to "follow the HEAT to vicroty". The Miami Heat are Miami's basketball team, and in basketball, a "score" is two points. Four score (8) plus two equals 10, the solution to this puzzle.
Puzzle: The Art Basel Puzzle
Location: Path to the Barnacle
Description:
Along the entrance path to the Barnacle in Coconut Grove stood a someone acting as a snobbish art lecturer named Art Basel. Next to him was a large canvas painting of a black dot on a white background. He was kept discussing the painting in almost sleep-inducing monotone.
Hunters were handed a printed description of the painting, which was titled "Stop." Art Basel, noted that the work was from the artist’s "Circular Period," exhorted his audience to see the painting as "reduced to its essential element," which was "all about finality, termination, endings and stopping points." He urged them to "drink in of its symbolic meaning, a meaning which is echoed in many places.", noting "The totality of its essence and the meaning of its symbolic nature can reveal the truth we all hold in our hands."
"It all adds up!" he insisted repeatedly.
Related puzzle photos and materials...
Puzzle Answer: 15
How to get the answer:
The big black circle on the canvas was in fact a large punctuation mark, namely a period. If Hunters added up all the periods they had in their handout, they got the solution: 15.
Puzzle: The Cruise Ship Comedians Puzzle
Location: Hunt main stage in Peacock Park
Description:
Carnival comics, as well as Dave Barry, took turns doing stand up comedy on the Hunt stage. They told lots of jokes, or parts of jokes. They set the jokes up, but always stopped before the end, then looked around at the lack of audience response and said variations on, "I'm missing something here...something important."
What did they keep on missing that was so important? Their punch lines.
Alert Hunters noticed that within sight of the stage, Hunt volunteers were handing out free punch at two punch stations. Each punch station had a serpentine bellrope for lines to form.
Related puzzle photos and materials...
Puzzle Answer: 25
How to get the answer:
The lines were the "punchlines" that the comics were drawing so much attention to. It so happened the bell ropes snaked in a distinctive pattern. The one on the left was in the shape of a 2, and the one on the right was the shape of a 5. The solution was 25.
Puzzle: Dance Lessons Puzzle
Location: Parking lot north of Peacock Park
Description:
At this location, to volunteers gave mass dancing lessons. The dance instructor began by teaching four individual dance steps -- the Motivate, the Doe, the Wind and the Loco. When the crowd seemed to be mastering the steps, the instructor said, "Ok, now we’re going to put them all together," and danced the four steps in sequence.
Related puzzle photos and materials...
Puzzle Answer: 20
How to get the answer:
Hunters had to notice the order in which the steps were danced: the Loco, then the Motivate, then the Wind, then the Doe. If Hunters said the names of the steps out loud, they got LOCOMOTIVATEWINDDOE, which sounded identical to "locomotive 8 window."
It so happened that in the special Hunt section, there were a dozen images of different modes of transportation, including ships, planes, cars and trains, also called locomotives. One of the locomotives pictured in the section had a clear number 8 on its side. This was locomotive 8. In its front windows were two taped Xs. In Roman numerals, XX is 20, which is the solution to this puzzle.
Puzzle: The Ships Puzzle
Location: The waterfront of the Barnacle
Description:
At the waterfront of the Barnacle historic property, two giant dice were stacked at the end of a long dock, one on top of the other, beside a giant ruler. A sign in front of them stated: "How good is your Huntsmanship? What do you see at the end of this dock?" With no further explanation, Hunters had to look elsewhere for the solution.
Related puzzle photos and materials...
Puzzle Answer: 855
How to get the answer:
In the Hunt issue was a large ad for Carnival’s newest ship, the Breeze. At the bottom of the ad was a list of some other ships in the Carnival fleet. Sharp Hunters noticed the name of one of those ships was the "Paradise," which sounded almost exactly like "pair of dice." Those Hunters who figured out the ruler next to the "pair o’ dice" was a reference to the measurement of the length of the Paradise, which was listed in the ad at 855 feet, solved this puzzle.
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The Clues
10. If you want to become a vegetarian, take a pea, carefully wrap it in lettuce, then throw it in the trash.
15. We only mention the word booger because we know you know it wouldn’t be a clue.
20. The world was aghast when Kate and William were pronounced man and wife, and William promptly turned into a frog.
25. You might want to avoid venturing into the forest, what with the voracious pollster bears lurking there.
855. We could lay down some sod, since growing grass from seed takes so long.
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The Final Puzzle
NOTE: The final puzzle description is hidden! In order to see them, you must highlight them with your mouse to reverse the text!
The Final Puzzle:
Hunters who solved the five puzzles above, gathered five clues:
10. If you want to become a vegetarian, take a pea, carefully wrap it in lettuce, then throw it in the trash.
15. We only mention the word booger because we know you know it wouldn’t be a clue.
20. The world was aghast when Kate and William were pronounced man and wife, and William promptly turned into a frog.
25. You might want to avoid venturing into the forest, what with the voracious pollster bears lurking there.
855. We could lay down some sod, since growing grass from seed takes so long.
At 3 pm, Dave Barry and Tom Shroder announced the final clue: Tom held up a painting of a green phone.
Final puzzle photos and materials...
Solving the Hunt:
Hunters needed to reason that the new clue told them two things: "green" and "phone." In the first five clues, there were exactly seven mentions of things that were green: pea, lettuce, booger, frog, forest, sod, grass. The fact that there were seven items, combined with the phone image from the final clue, alerted National-Security-Risk-smart Hunters to the fact that we were trying to give them a coded phone number: Count the letters in each of the green words and you had a phone number: 376-4635. If they dialed that number in the 305 area code, they heard a recording: "Congratulations for getting this far. Go to many big signposts. Think smaller."
Hunt teams had to realize this was a reference back to the signpost puzzle and go back to that puzzle location. They had to look for the signposts labeled with the letters M, A, N, Y, B, I and G. If they "thought smaller" on each of the word pairs on those signs by choosing the smaller word, they got the final message: GO HOME HAND CATCH HER YOUR NUMBER.
At Peacock Park, just behind the Hunt stage, there was a baseball field. A couple of people, seemingly oblivious to the Hunt going on around them, were playing pitch and catch there. The first team to run to home plate, and hand their cell number to the catcher, won the Hunt.
Who won (Congratulations!):
1st place: Fiscal Cliff Hangers
2nd place: 2008 Champs
3rd place: 3-Peaters
Photos & related materials for the winners...
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Articles/Ads
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Photos, articles, stories and other multimedia related to the hunt...
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