Narrative by Naina Mistry, member of the 2001 Herald Hunt 1st Place Winning Team -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We started our day with a light breakfast at the Chat Room Cafe, just across the street from Young Circle Park. We were equipped with cell phones, walkie-talkies, a video camera, and a PDA. As we munched on bagels and muffins, we scrutinized the special Hunt section one last time (having bought several papers the night before), sharing anything we thought might be significant. At noon, we positioned ourselves at the end of Hollywood Blvd, across from the park, and listened to the clues on the radio. We had "solved" the initial puzzles the night before and quickly plotted the puzzle locations on the map. The first puzzle we headed for was the wrestling ring, but they hadn't started up yet, so we decided to go to the most remote location -- the park at the corner of Hollywood and 20th. We picked up our ballot and headed for a secluded spot. I had noticed a butterfly theme the night before, so it only took us about 2 minutes to solve the puzzle. I read out the butterfly names from the fake ad while Homer punched the ballot. After removing some pesky "hanging chads" we lined up the ballot with the butterflies on the Hunt map. Nothing showed up on the first try, so we turned it around, and voila!, there was the roman numeral CMXLV -- or was it a math problem: CM x LV? We tried both, and found only 945 corresponded to a clue, so we had our first answer. We were glad we did this puzzle first, because it gave us a huge boost of confidence. We went back to the wrestling ring, which had sprung into action. Unfortunately, we were completely baffled by what we saw and heard. Why were these wrestlers dressed as women? What "titles" was the announcer referring to? After several agonizing minutes of total bewilderment (and horror at watching them throw each other around), we decided to move on and come back later. We picked up our "Trick or Treat" bags at the end of Tyler St. We had already noticed the misspelling of the word "Streat" on the map, so we visited those three streets and picked up our treats. Remembering that Baby Ruth was 14 from the article in the Hunt section, we expected a math problem, so it didn't take long to figure it out once we had all the candy. Around this point, a plane flew overhead towing a banner that read, "BUY A NEW CAR, 1 877 HIS COST." We were sure it was a clue, but when we called the number, the person on the other end just wanted to sell us a car. Hmm. After that we headed over to the park for the other two puzzles. We started at the amphitheatre, where we carefully took notes during the 3 minute play. When it was over, we walked up to the stage and mused over what we had seen and what Einstein had to do with it. Then Daniel said, "E equals M C squared," and we instantly caught on and did a little celebratory dance before heading over to the lawn to do the math. We were a little daunted when faced with the apparent chaos at the "Walk of Fame" puzzle, but once we noticed that some people were following the direction of the feet, we understood what was going on. We found the first person on each of the three lists and followed the feet. We had a little trouble tracing the path on paper, since it was hard to get a sense of scale with so many people around, but the results looked enough like 265 that we were confident with our answer. Then we headed back to the wrestling ring to give it another try. By this time it was around 2:00 and the announcer was giving away far more clues than he had earlier in the day. Daniel got "Four Weddings and a Funeral" right away, but for some reason we thought they were both movie titles, so it took us a while to get "Catch 22" (even though it was a movie as well). Then there was some debate as to how to "combine" the titles. Since there was no 4122 or 2241 on the list, we added 22+4+1 and got 27. Once we had our five answers, we went over the clues. For #27, we figured we needed to go back to the park where we picked up the butterfly ballots and look for a clock. Sure enough, there was a clock with both hands pointing to 6, so we knew S was either 6 or 630, whatever that meant. We had no idea what #265 meant, but assumed it would make sense after getting the final clue. Same with #945. We were sure we had #4034 figured out. While we were eating breakfast before the Hunt, Daniel pointed out that Madonna was in all the races in the fake horse track ad. Soon afterwards, as I was scanning the clues one more time, I pointed out that "Madonna's record" could refer to the horse's standings in the seven races, and was willing to bet that it would be one of the real clues. Of course, since there were seven races, we thought it would either give us a phone number, or refer back to the three "History's Greats" lists published in the Hunt section. As for #21296, we assumed that was a password. We even called 1-877 HIS-COST one more time and said "Can you see?", but no dice. Taking another look at the map, we noticed that the drawing of Young Circle Park resembled the clock in Anniversary Park, so we went to the southernmost spot in the circle (the 6:30 position) to look for clues. There were a couple of huge trees, but nothing out of the ordinary. We had some time to kill before 3:00, so we watched the 3-minute play again just for kicks and then bought some t-shirts and posters and staked out a patch of lawn to wait for the final clue. When Dave appeared onstage and told us that P equals 13,352,778, we were somewhat taken aback. We were expecting a little more than that, but we sat down and went to work. We couldn't find an equation with a P and an S, but thought it may have something to do with Win, Place, and Show in the horse track ad. Frantic searching failed to uncover any values for W, so we abandoned that idea. Looking at clue #945, I thought it might be referring to a shoe tree, and then noticed a shoe on the map that marked the spot where we'd seen a pair of huge trees earlier in the day. I pointed it out to the rest of the team, but they didn't think it was a clue. After we continued to stare at the clues without any epiphanies, I announced that I was going to check out the tree. No one else seemed interested, so I wandered over and looked for a sign of some kind. I was discouraged by the fact that more people seemed interested in the parking machines (clearly marked with a P) than the trees, but I did a quick circuit. Unfortunately, it never occurred to me to look at the carvings on the trees, since I didn't think the Hunt organizers would deface a tree, so I went back to the group thinking I was on the wrong track. By this time, Dave had given out the first hint, and we were getting nervous. We decided the "invitation to divide and conquer" suggested we divide P by S (since dividing S by P didn't seem likely). Using S = 6, we were excited to end up with a 7-digit number, which we assumed was a phone number. However, calling that number with various local area codes or 800 prefixes yielded no results. Then we got the second hint, and we figured out that we needed to use the phone keypad somehow. At first, we tried it with 13,352,778, but that didn't work well. Then we went back to the 7-digit number, and Jack applied the win, place, and show from Madonna's "record" to the three letters for each number, which yielded BACKHOE. Since English is his second language, Jack wasn't familiar with that word, but Homer explained it to him and we pulled out our maps to see if there was a backhoe on it anywhere. Sure enough, there was one! We were VERY excited at this point (although we were still confused about the footwear clue) but we managed to get up very slowly and casually, and strolled across the street as nonchalant as could be. Janice volunteered to stay behind in case Dave gave out any more hints. We saw a few other people walking around, but no one appeared to be heading in the same direction as we were. As we rounded the corner into the alley where the backhoe was marked on the map, we doubted ourselves because there was nobody there, but suddenly a staff person poked her head out of a doorway and we sprinted the rest of the distance. Sure enough, there was a handwritten sign that said "Backhoe entry" (or something like that) taped to the door. The woman asked us to wait outside, and we could see that there were already several people inside. We knew we had solved the Hunt, but it appeared that a few teams had finished ahead of us. We sent Jack in to explain how we arrived there, and waited outside with eager anticipation. At that point we were thrilled to think we might be 4th or 5th. We tried to reach Janice on the walkie-talkie, but couldn't contact her. Then Jack poked his head out the door, his eyes wide as saucers, and said, "Come in guys, we won!" I'm surprised I didn't break any ribs in the ensuing group hug. We were in total shock! Well you know the rest...