Washington Post Hunt

On Sunday we participated in the Washington Post Hunt. As its name suggests, its sponsored by the Washington Post. However, a bit more interesting is that it is designed and run by Dave Barry, Tom Shroder and Gene Weingarten. Basically, it involves 5 puzzles located somewhere in an 8x8-ish block area of DC. Each puzzle (if solved correctly) gives you a clue for a final puzzle. After three hours, the final clue is given, and then it's just the first person to solve that puzzle wins.

We had a good time, but were a little frustrated at how little we got right. Especially when it's so easy and obvious when you know the answer. Video solutions to the puzzles are found here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/2011-post-hunt-the-acrobat/2011/06/05/AGRO1lJH_video.html


Here we are at the beginning of the race. The first clue is in the background on the right.

In the first clue, there were Government Agents Providing Solutions on the stage. Basically, there were three people answering questions. Their answers were hints to which agency they represented. Their agency was then used to fill in the blanks to a puzzle, which told you what numbers to add to get the final answer. We only got part of this one :( The problem is that there is no direction, you just have to solve them based on what you see. We didn't connect the random fill in the blank sheet in our goody bag with this puzzle.


There were tons of people. The Hunt started in Freedom Plaza.

Next, we went to a puzzle that was a bunch of black columns. However, when mapped out, they looked like a key board. There were numbers on some of the columns. When put in order with their keys, they spelled fifteen. I got that one :)

Then we went back down Pennsylvania Ave. to find this clue. The setup was straight from an ad in the Washington Post Magazine. So we turned to the ad and tried to figure out what number could possibly be the answer. We noticed right away that the mirror was missing from the setup, but weren't sure what to do with that. We added up the price of all the objects, took various permutations, etc., but didn't come up with any good answer. We left this one stumped. (Go to the video answer link at the top of the post for the solution).


Here are some of the pieces used to solve the puzzles. The map is from the Washington Post magazine which comes with the paper on Saturday. It was essential to the game. The scratch card was another of the five puzzles. It says "Scratch ONLY Where Needed." There were lots of letters that turned out to be words written vertically. We scratched all of the O's, N's, L's and Y's, and added the revealed numbers. They added to 50, which was a possible solution. Unfortunately, it was wrong :(


The last of the main puzzles was an acrobat doing a routine. After her routine, she said to put our thinking caps on and text the word "lemons" to a specific number. When we texted LEMONS (all caps because we're smart like that), it said that the answer was not that easy. The key was that she did a headstand when she said the word "lemons." Melanie figured out that the answer was "SNOW37." When we texted that, we got a response "WE." Unfortunately for us, there were some skaters illustrated on the map in the magazine, and the skaters were saying "Wheee." So we thought that the clue would be where the skaters were drawn. It wasn't. We then figured to turn WE upside down to get the map coordinate 3-M. The clue was there, also upside down. Go us!


With all five of the puzzles done (but not solved), we were actually able to fill in the numbered grid we received at the beginning of the hunt using just the two we were certain about and a good guess at what the picture was. It was an outhouse (you can see this 2 pictures up).

For the final clue, each of the Beatles sang a brief part of a different song. Because an outhouse is a "John," we were supposed to know which Beatle was actually giving us the clue. We didn't make that connection either, but based on what each Beatle sang, his was the only clue that made sense anyway. His clue sent us to map coordinate T-4.2, where we received business cards with a phone number. Again, the phone number was not correct, but when properly rearranged, gave the final clue. Unfortunately, I only partly rearranged the numbers. I got some random person's voicemail. It's likely that this person received a number of unexpected calls that day.

Anyway, all in all a great family activity. We definitely want to do it next year, and invite any and all to join us.