Gadarene's Online Scavenger Hunt -- main thread

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

See this thread for a general overview of the game. Even if you didn’t post there, you’re welcome to play. Just dive in and answer as many questions as you can. Here’s the basic set-up:

[ol]
[li]The items are grouped into three categories of difficulty: 5 points, 10 points, and 15 points (there’s one 20 pointer). This is a rough reflection of the degree of lateral thinking and/or interactivity needed to find the item or fulfill its conditions. Generally, the more points an item is worth, the more time (or the more steps) it should take you to complete it.[/li][li]Assuming I’ve counted correctly, there are 450 possible points. The first person to post a correct answer to a question gets the points for that question. The winner is the poster with the most points when either (1) all the questions have been answered correctly, or (2) nobody has attempted to answer a question in a week, at least 300 points have been allocated, and one person has at least 100 points. In the event that two people end up tied, a tiebreaker will be used. Winner gets a $20 Amazon.com gift certificate.[/li][li]I’ll post to tell you whether you’ve earned the points for a question or to request clarification. If you get a question wrong and no one’s answered it correctly yet, you can try again.[/li][li]Feel free to be creative in answering the questions. Remember, however, that I am the ultimate arbiter of whether points should be awarded in each case. None of the questions are intended to be particularly tricky – that is, there is a single concrete answer (or response) for each item, and you’ll almost certainly know it when you see it. At my discretion, I may award partial points for answers which are not “correct” – that is, not the answer I had in mind, for which the question was designed – but which nevertheless substantially fulfill the question’s conditions. Once again, however, if the answer doesn’t seem quite to fit the question, it’s likely not the right answer. Only right answers – or as near as dammit – will earn full points.[/li][li]Google is your friend, but for most of the items it’s not going to take you quite as far as you need to go. This scavenger hunt is designed in part to lead you across a broad swath of the Internet, and the questions are intentionally phrased to be slightly resistant to straightforward google-fu.[/li][li]Do post comments and such regarding questions that you think are unfulfillable, unfair, or unclear. I’ll respond as best I can without giving away the answer.[/ol][/li]
All that make sense? I’ll give you the questions in the next post.

2

Scavenger Hunt Questions

  1. Chad is sitting in the Friendly Confines. What’s the name of his girlfriend? (10 points)

  2. If I’m a hound and I see three lines, each above the other, extending in the same direction and not meeting, what should I do? (10 points)

  3. In no less than one hundred of your own words, explain the Timecube. (10 points)

  4. Get me a pinpoint cite for Ludacris. (5 points)

  5. How did Tom Moore prove a point about politics without leaving his house? (10 points)

  6. How many air-handling systems operated independently in Duke University’s Perkins Library as of November 22, 1995? Show your work. (10 points)

  7. What was Tom Servo’s nom de usenet? (10 points)

  8. Annotate ten Repoz references. (15 points)

  9. Aeschylus, Henry Vaughan, Xenophon, Shakespeare, R.M. Lockley, W.B. Yeats, who? (15 points)

  10. According to Sean R., what do El Dorado’s people call his outfit? (10 points)

  11. For any N (N being a number), who’s greater than N? (10 points)

  12. How many triple haws in Ivan the Terrible? (10 points)

  13. Find a name that completes this all-time nine: Trowbridge, Jack, Peter, Lee, Henley, Lamar, Herman, Roger. Justify your answer. (10 points) Bonus: There may be several subjective errors in the list as constituted, but there’s only one thing that’s arguably objectively wrong. What is it? (5 points)

  14. Which Duke player made Jason Evans almost GGLC on February 10, 2005? (10 points) Bonus: What does GGLC stand for? (10 points)

  15. MAS*H was used in furtherance of which broad canon of construction? (5 points)

  16. Find me an obituary for a celebrity who isn’t dead. (10 points)

  17. What honor did the Weekly Reader probably not bestow upon San Diego in 2004? (10 points)

  18. A comic walks into a talent agent’s office and says, “I wasn’t in the movie, but boy, do I have an act for you!” The agent says, “Oh yeah? Show me what you’ve got.” (10 points)

  19. Find someone blogging about a sexual experience they had with a celebrity. (10 points)

  20. Take this super dollar back: William, Joseph, Douglas, who? (10 points)

  21. What does Jesus think about NoVa women? (5 points)

  22. What is four times verboten on r.a.t.m.m.? (10 points)

  23. Who does Maelstrom’s hair? (10 points)

  24. Contrary to stereotype, what’s the only piece of classical music anyone listens to? (15 points)

  25. What does it mean if the Orange Gatorade is gone and they’ve arrived at the pizza place before you? (10 points)

  26. Show me you have no idea what I’m talking about. (7 points) Bonus points if you can tell me why what you show me is factually incorrect. (8 points)

  27. I go from Oakland to New York to Oakland to Toronto to Oakland to San Diego to Anaheim to Oakland to New York to Seattle to San Diego to Boston to Los Angeles. You go from Oakland to New York to Toronto to Seattle to Baltimore to Los Angeles to Chicago to St. Louis to Cincinnati to Minneapolis to Chicago to Arlington to Phoenix. We meet in Oakland in 1979. Who are we? (10 points)

  28. Find me a band named after an Eddie Izzard bit. If your answer is “Tea,” find me another band named after an Eddie Izzard bit. (10 points)

  29. Who’s the sluttiest documented member of the computer scene? (10 points) Who spoofs otherwise? (5 points)

  30. What are the Rules 42? (10 points)

  31. Find me two guys playing Pong in chat. (10 points)

  32. He of Trent’s Last: antonomasia for an eponym. Do what he did for the celebrity of your choice. (10 points)

  33. Make a comic strip. Make it quirky. Include the phrase, “I hate everything.” (5 points)

  34. If a stop sign has six, how many does a slow sign have? (5 points)

  35. Anita Barone and Mark Hamill are working at a radio station. Who’s the maintenance guy? (10 points)

  36. Who outed Dick Pole? (10 points)

  37. That arrow was surely sent by Osama Bin Laden! What do you do? (5 points)

  38. Make me a NATO-member tracklist, one band for each country. (10 points)

  39. What’s one reason Washington Wizards guard Steve Blake likes Johnny Rockets so much? (10 points)

  40. It’s now apparent that Mark Evans doesn’t identify with musical Mary Lennox. Why? (15 points)

  41. Y sus números de teléfono fueron expuestos también. Demuéstreme. (15 points)

  42. Decipher this: OKQOURYFTDOLTUUOYGUGXHDFFWOBLFTQZUMTW (20 points)
    Good luck!

3

Steve Blake now plays for the Portland Trailblazers, not the Washington Wizards. It doesn’t matter for the purposes of the question, but I like these things to be correct. :slight_smile:

4

A quick one OTTOMH:

Asking “who’s better, Joel or Mike?”

5

Hal Briston:

Absolutely correct, for 10 points. You’ve just surged into an early lead. :slight_smile:

(And for the record, the answer is, “They’re both great.” Now, of the superiority of TV’s Frank to those who followed, there can be no question.)

6

#34

Three

7

Baker:

How come? :slight_smile:

8

Cause it’s a triangle.

And BTW, I’ve been trying to go over some of your items, and I don’t think I’ll be able to keep up. I can’t make heads or tails of some of the questions. I just spent fifteen minutes on hounds, and couldn’t come up with an answer, that’s going to take up too much of my time. Sorry, but best of luck to the rest of the players.

9

…But a stop sign doesn’t have six sides.

And I’m sorry to hear that; feel free to join back in again any time you want.

10

#34

six also (consonants)

No, it can’t be that easy, can it?

11
  1. The “House” is the Texas legislature- he proved a point by getting the legislature to pass a salute to Albert DeSalvo, the Boston Strangler. (He was trying to prove that most legislators pay little or no attention to the bills they vote on.)
12

Straight-up Google-fu:

Covered in Bees
personal bonus points for finding the answer and typing this out one-handed while feeding the baby with the other hand.

13
  1. Ivy?
14

Assuming this is not HHGTTG-related (and it’s not), I’m going to have to take a stab with a series of rules representing “…empirical knowledge of the various extraneous collection and testing factors which may influence the analysis of a sample.”

15

at any point in time the earth’s time zones can be viewed with 4 seperate peaks or corners, he views this as 4 different days each moving through is own day. Now why each time zone can’t be viewed as moving through its own day I can’t tell and viewed another way that is more concrete to me there are always three days existing simutaneusly (from where I live there is always someone a day ahead of me and someone a day behind. Maybe the theory is that is like a double Janus head each aspect (corner, peak) can only see from it’s point of view so it only sees it’s “day”. If it was viewed as each time had a sepaerate day the aspects could “see” the aspects nearest it.

Adhemar

16

16.) Sharon Osbourne

17

6 6 6:

Yeah, it’s essentially that easy. Your answer wasn’t what I had in mind, but 5 points to you for fulfilling the conditions of the question. This question still counts as having been answered correctly, but the original answer is still up for grabs, if someone can guess it.

18

astorian:

Heh. No.

Correct! 10 points for you.

19

Hal Briston:

Correct! 10 points, for 20 total. I’d also have accepted Hello Swindon.

Nng. It’s not Hitchhiker’s related, as you correctly surmised, but that wasn’t what I had in mind. Still, it’s a valid answer. One of the perils of needing to phrase questions ambiguously, I suppose. I’ll give ya 5 points, and the original question’s still open. You’ve got 25 total.

20

Dorothy Jane, his daughter.