Saturday and Sunday were pretty dull, unfortunately. We didn’t get too much done around the house, though we did get a start on bringing boxes up from the basement and going through them. We sorted through five partially-filled boxes of kitchen equipment, threw out the stuff we didn’t want/need any more, and reduced that down to two boxes. There’s a lot more of that sort of thing to be done, including several bags to be prepared for Goodwill.

On Monday, though, we finally got some motivation into ourselves and headed out to the News and Observer’s Downtown Puzzle Party in Raleigh. The weather was pretty spotty – on-again, off-again rain, which is never fun. We braved it, though, along with about 400 other people. The idea was that you would visit four locations throughout downtown Raleigh (the clues to which were given in the newspaper earlier in the week). In reality, it wasn’t that hard, since they advised that everyone visit the locations in order. This meant that even if you had no idea what the clues were, you could just follow the mob. That was kind of a bummer, but oh well.

The first clue was a couple of street preachers extolling the virtues of suffering to get what you desire. They cited Job, Chapter 8, verses 3 through 6 repeatedly. Hmm. OK. Is it a cryptogram? We puzzled over it a bit while heading over to the second location.

There, we found a couple debating what shows to see. They mentioned Broadway Series South prominently, that he liked shows about death while she liked perky shows about rainbows. As this was going on, a homeless guy behind them held a sign that said, “Please Help” and kept asking for $2.88 for bus fare. Takaza started to piece it together at this point – I admit I was still mystified.

At the third location, a duo on guitar and bass played a cover of Billy Joel’s “Only the Good Die Young” while a chalk artist drew pictures on the sidewalk in front of them – five stick-figures, five suns, five hearts. When they were done, they talked about how they really wished they had more people – a quintet, even. Dan had a pretty good idea of what the answer was at this point, but I was withholding judgment until we hit the fourth location.

At the final location, we found a mother who was trying to get her son to call her on the phone. She kept telling him that the last number of the phone number was five, and stressed that he really needed to call her more often. That confirmed to us that Dan had the right answer.

Well, Dan clued in early because he makes business-to-business collection calls for his employer, so calls a lot of companies in Raleigh. He realized that 836 (Job 8:3-6) is a Raleigh exchange. Piecing together the clues, in order, we got a phone number – 836-2885. We called that number and got the message of, “Congratulations! You solved the puzzle.” We were instructed to write a phrase on our entry form and turn it in, which we did at around 11:30 AM. We grabbed some lunch, then went back home to rest a bit until the 3 PM prize drawings.

So, did we win? Sadly, no. They gave away five prize packages in the Couples category, but our entry wasn’t drawn. They also drew ten entries from all of the remaining ones; those ten people each got a key to a giant treasure chest. The fourth person to try opened the lock, and he and his wife won $10,000. Pretty damn cool.

We had a whole lot of fun, more even than we expected to. I kidded Dan that this was the warm-up for Urban Challenge, though he’s not so sure about that. We’re still kicking around ideas for a Furry Challenge Chicago – a fun one-day puzzle/scavenger hunt for Chicago open to all of LAFF, followed by a cookout. I think it would be a complete hoot and a lot of fun to set up. It wouldn’t be before next summer, but hey – we’ll see what happens between now and then.