Tuesday, March 12, 2002
“Hunting of the Snark”
What made this hunt so hard? Puzzles like the 192-letter cryptogram, for one thing. As Jean notes, “A cipher of that length should be a snap to break. And this one wouldn't have been bad at all if I'd thought to mention that the hidden message was in Spanish. But I didn't. I also neglected to note that the pairs 'll', 'rr,' and 'ch' stood for single letters, as they do in the Spanish alphabet.” Chalk up some frustrated victims for this ruse, particularly the people on the Spanish House team, who were among the last to figure out the trick.
Via my dog wants to be on the radio, The Great Annual MIT Mystery Hunt
So there we were, Bill, Dave and I, driving along this lone stretch of road looking dilligently for the next clue and not finding it at all. We eventually went back to the previous point in the treasure hunt, and carefully traced the clue back to that same lone stretch of highway. This time we found the clue but were the last team to do so.
It turns out that we had solved the puzzle too quickly and the person handing out the clue didn't arrive in time.
I think we ended up coming in second or third place.
And I never was on a winning scavenger hunt team. Not that we didn't have fun while doing it.
![[The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades]](https://www.conman.org/people/spc/about/2023/1023.t.jpg "The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades")