Arrrrrrrr!

This week’s post is a little late, but I hope you will forgive me in that I couldn’t possibly make it before the event I am about to discuss had actually happened. That’s right: yesterday, Saturday the 18th, was the second annual Cross-Ottawa treasure hunt – PIRATES!

First of all, a huge THANK YOU to everyone who came out to join us – we had guests from Toronto, Montreal, Kingston, Pennsylvania, New York, and even Singapore (!!!). Not to mention all you awesome Ottawa people!

Another huge THANK YOU to those who have shared/ are sharing/ are about to share their photos with me!

Arrrr! Here there be pictures*! (And more)

THE TEAMS:

The Scurvy Mangoes

Team Everyone Arrived Late So They Didn’t Give Me A Name

DJ SHY and the Scallywags

Team Tyler Is the Best and All the Girls on the Team Want Him (- Tyler) AKA Team Tyler Is A Jerk (- Sophie)

[something] As Represented by Captain Crunch (sorry, guys – my notes are illegible here, but, if you comment, I’ll correct it)

Team Yaaaaarrrrrris

THE STANDINGS:

Winner – Team Yaaaaarrrrrris, who found the treasure

Runner-up (and winner for Best Costume/Swag: note the pimped-out ride) – Team Everyone Arrived Late So They Didn’t Give Me A Name, who decoded the last clue and then learned the treasure had already been found

3rd place – DJ SHY and the Scallywags, who got to the last clue but didn’t have time to look at it before the game ended

tie for 4th – The other three teams all had difficulty finding the last two digits for Clue #3 (see below)

THE CLUES:

While waiting for everyone to arrive, the players looked at a golden coin decorated with a skull-and-crossbones and the word “R. U. M.”. To win, a team had to find the identical coin hidden in Centrepointe Park and return it to me. To do so, they followed a set of clues. At the start, each team was given a pirate grab bag containing a copy of the rules, a pirate balloon (fun!), a long ribbon of paper with pairs of letters written all down it, and a mysterious blank CD.

Clue #1: Dots and Dashes – When put in a CD player or computer, each CD played the sentence “You need a dowel of five eighths of an inch diameter” in Morse code.

Clue #2: Round and Round – Once a team had a dowel of the proper size, they had to wrap the ribbon of paper around it to get the message, “TEN DIGITS* ONE IS RIDEAU CENTRE DIAPER AISLE* FOR TWO AND THREE DISCOVER THE HILL GUIDE YOURSELF TO ELIZABETH REGINA* FOUR PAY FOR SOUP AT THE CHATEAU* FIVE AND SIX TAKE THREE KIDS ON PAULS BOAT TWO RIVER ONE CANAL* SEVEN AND EIGHT ARE BRASS BEHIND LOONY MOUNTIES ON SPARKS ST* NINE AND TEN CAPITAL SIGHTS LEADS YOU TO THE BANK STREET PROMENADE* THE REST IS FILLER* [however much of Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” speech I could fit]

Clue #3: Ottawa Centre – By visiting different sites downtown, the team found the phone number for the Ottawa Citizen’s department of classified ads, 613-829-9321
6 = the aisle number of the diaper aisle in the Rideau Centre’s Shoppers Drug Mart
13 = the site number assigned to the statue of Queen Elizabeth II on Parliament Hill in the free “Discover the Hill” pamphlet
8 = the price (in dollars) of Soup of the Day according to the menu outside the restaurant at the Chateau Laurier
29 = the price (in dollars) to take two children on Paul’s Boat tour of the Ottawa River and one child on Paul’s Boat tour of the Rideau Canal
93 = the bright brass street number of Canada’s Four Corners, a store on Sparks St. with a statue of a mountie with a loon’s head on either side of the door
21 = the site number of the Bank St. Promenade on the “Capital Sights” maps for tourists located at many major intersections downtown

Clue #4: Black and White – Under “Personal Messages” in the Ottawa Citizen was the classified ad “Dear Pirates: http://www.clue.srkriger.com” GOOD LUCK!!!!!”.

Clue #5: Wizards and Witches – The text of the clue can still be found here. The ordered pair (x,y) represents the yth word on the xth page of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (the one book I could be sure was available all over town but likely wouldn’t be at the library). The decoded message reads: “Three coins one real two decoys first under red hut second below bridge third upon grey stone building all three stuck to north and south poles”.

Clue #6: North and South – All three coins were stuck to magnets. The two decoys, one missing one of the cross bones and the other with an added nose, were under the bridge on the bike path and on top of the grey stone structure near the larger children’s playground. The real treasure was hidden under the little red hut in the smaller children’s playground.

FUN STUFF:

Afterwards, we all had dinner at the Mongolian Village – thirty-three guests dressed as pirates (photo by Trish, from Komal).

In case you were wondering about the rest of Team Everyone Arrived Late… , here they are, with me, outside the Chateau Laurier. We were approached by a woman who asked us to speak with her pirate-obsessed, four-year-old nephew. Clearly, however, the young lad was having none of the strangers-dressed-up-like-crazy-people.

Where did Team Yaaaarrrrris’s adhesive mustaches go between their team photo and their final photo?

When Team Yaaaarrrrrris searched underneath the wrong red hut, they were joined by a little girl who isn’t in this photo. Heather found a toy unicorn that had nothing to do with the hunt and gave it to her.

The hardware store was so used to pirates by the time we got there that they led us straight to the dowels.

The Scurvy Mangoes decided their time was better spent “consulting” with the other teams (photo by Trish, from Komal).

Scurvy Mango ahoy! (photo by Trish, from Komal)

Team Everyone Arrived Late… and the Scurvy Mangoes clash outside the diaper aisle!

For DJ SHY and the Scallywags, a Scurvy Mango, and me, finding treasure is no walk in the park (photo by Trish, from Komal).

The Scurvy Mangoes and Cap’n Crunch were the only two teams to brave the OC Transpo system on a Saturday. Here are the Scurvy Mangoes on the bus (photo by Trish, from Komal).

The teams had to go to many of the major tourist sites of downtown Ottawa (photo by Trish, from Komal).

Finally, did I spend the day wandering around the city dressed as a pirate? You bet! (photo by Juliana)

Next year, the theme will be Sherlock Holmes! Hope everyone joins us again.

* If you want me to remove one of the photos of you, please comment or email me.

** If you have photos of the teams I didn’t see much during the hunt (DJ SHY and the Scalliwags, Team Tyler is…, or Cap’n Crunch), do forward them to me, please!