(Previously: Part 1)
We pick up our race with the teams just having finished the Trivia Quiz. If you looked over the questions and thought, “My gosh, that looks hard!”, you’re right! Heck, I think I got only about 15 of them correct when takaza first showed them to me.
Here’s the results of the quiz, and the order in which the teams departed:
| Order of departure | Team | Number of questions correct | Time test was turned in |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Team Simbius (Sirius & Simba) | 11 | 11:51 |
| 2 | Torgo’s Angels (Tincrash & Max) | 17 | 15:00 |
| 3 | Team Crossing Gates (Posicat & Stormdog) | 18 | 15:00 |
| 4 | Team Bi-Bitches (Lisa & Moira) | 19 | 14:10 |
| 5 | Minoriteam (Stevie & Jason) | 19 | 11:28 |
| 6 | Team Vin Diesel Hubcaps (DaveQat & Morris) | 29 | 6:58 |
| 7 | Team Yuk (Linnaeus & Mirko) | 38 | 9:40 |
I would mention the protest lodged by Team Simbius that the trivia quiz was skewed against those under a certain age. The official response to this is: “Tough noogies.” 🙂
Teams then left the hotel in the order shown above, one team departing every ten minutes (Team Vin Diesel Hubcaps was two minutes late departing due to a late return from IHOP, but they were not penalized). Each team had a packet filled with more than a dozen envelopes. The packet also contained pens, change for tolls, and a map of the CTA. Each envelope was labeled with a Chicago landmark (Sears Tower, Field Museum, etc.), though what the envelope was labeled and what their destination was for each clue had no relation to each other.
When a team was ready to depart, they were led into the hallway and instructed to open their first clue: the envelope labeled United Center. This led to their first clue:
Welcome to FRAC 2! Here’s your first clue:
Proceed to the Des Plaines Oasis on the Northwest Tollway. Using the coins in this envelope ONLY, bring us proof that you know where the World’s Largest Catsup Bottle is located.
Call FRAC HQ when you know the answer.
(Taped to the sheet of paper were two quarters and a penny)
Also, in small type in the bottom right corner of the page was the following: 8, 13, 4, 18, 9
ANSWER: The players were looking for a machine at the oasis which pressed pennies into souvenirs. The finished penny would look like this:
Viewers of the last season of The Amazing Race will be amused by Linnaeus’ description “Fran and Barry’ing” back and forth past the machine, not seeing it. Most teams found it pretty quickly and called with the answer:Collinsville, Illinois (highlight text to see answer)
After the first clue, Team Vin Diesel Hubcaps was at the front of the pack, though only a few minutes separated the teams. Once they called FRAC HQ, they were instructed to open their next envelope:
For your next clue, you will need to proceed to the Cumberland El Stop. What to do next? Well, that’s for you to determine:
Complete the word search. When you have circled all of the words, the uncircled letters will spell out the next step in your travels.
Call FRAC HQ when you know your destination.
ANSWER: “YOU NEED TO TAKE THE TRAIN TO THE CLARK STATION” (highlight text to see answer)
This one didn’t cause too many problems for people. It’s hard to say who was ahead at this point since teams could call anywhere along the way once they solved the puzzle, but no team had any problems figuring it out. Once they called with their destination, teams were instructed to open their next envelope:
CHECKPOINT #3: SUDOKU FUN!
Every row must contain the numbers 1-6, non-repeating
Every column must contain the numbers 1-6, non-repeating
Every 2×3 box must contain the numbers 1-6, non-repeating
Solve the puzzle and then enter the highlighted numbers into the spaces on the right side of the puzzle. Read the numbers from top to bottom, and that will be the address to your next location on West Randolph Street. Once at the location, find the answer to the following question:
If you were going to catch the matinee at the Orpheum Circuit in 1929, what time would the show begin? Call FRAC HQ when you know the answer.
ANSWER: The highlighted numbers were (top to bottom) 1, 5, and 1. 151 West Randolph Street is the Cadillac Palace Theatre. On the walls by the doors are a couple of displays showing the history of the theater, and one of them is a reproduction of a playbill from the 1920’s, showing that the matinee time is 2:15 PM (highlight text to see answer)
Again, teams didn’t have too many problems with this one, probably because a couple of the teams included Sudoku fiends. Team Vin Diesel Hubcaps continued to lead, but were trailed by Minoriteam, only three minutes behind. It’s amusing to note that a woman was waiting outside of the checkpoint, watching the teams as they came and went, and commented to a couple of players how many teams had arrived there before them.
Ready for the next set of checkpoints? Parades, Thai restaurants, and Miffy, oh my!
Whee! This looks like loads of fun 🙂 I love reading the progress 😀
me too 🙂 eating lunch and scratching my head at the Sodoku lol I haven’t sat down to try one of those yet 😉
It’s actually not too bad, once you get the hang of it. I suppose it wouldn’t help if I pointed out that the puzzle above was taken from a “Sudoku for Kids” website 😉
Oh, good. I honestly wasn’t sure anyone was interested in reading all of this 🙂 I’ll be putting up the next few checkpoints this afternoon!
Yep! It’s like The Amazing Race and that new show, Treasure Hunters, all in one 🙂 I love puzzles, so this kinda thing is right up my alley 🙂
Hubcaps, damn you! Hubcaps!
Wheels…hubcaps…what’s the difference? 🙂
I fixed the name.
This is fun to read. Engaging way to unwrap the FRAC 🙂
Thanks!
Return of the Racers: Minoriteam checks in
When we got in the car and saw the 51 cents I knew exactly what we needed to find, but I hadn’t been in the oasis since the remodel so I didn’t really know where in there it would be. Driving from the hotel to the checkpoint was averaged at 65mph with the flow of traffic, arriving there just as Team Bi-Bitches were walking out with a phone to their ears. So Team Yuk had a Fran and Barry moment, eh? My teammate was briefly distracted by the tobacco and music shop that was in there just before the machine. And while I called the answer in, he did the work.
Confession: on the road to the Cumberland train station, the traffic at the toll plaza looked congested enough that I veered off-course and took the O’hare exit ramp and clover-leafed Mannheim Road to keep the car moving instead of sitting in the summer heat. My teammate was grateful for the extra time to find the rest of the words in the puzzle, though we figured it out by the time we parked in the lot.
Once the sudoku puzzle was opened, I was all “GIMME!” and had it finished just as our train had arrived. Here’s my chicken scratch. Our address calculations were a bit off, though, as we exited the Thompson Center and went right to Clark instead of left to LaSalle. And after we called in the answer, Torgo’s Angels walked up, so we walked off to the corner of LaSalle and Randolph to open the next clue. Though I didn’t notice any of the aforementioned passersby at the theatre who were commenting on the other racers.
I too was able to guess what the 51 cents was for, but when we got to the oasis we pretty much both looked right past the penny squasher machine. I had to ask the cashier at one of the stalls where it was. Then, in a rush to move on to the next clue, I failed to follow the directions on the machine and ended up with a penny with an unhelpful lucky horseshoe on it instead of the specified ketchup bottle. Since we didn’t know at this point just how pedantic about following instructions you guys were planning to be, we searched our pockets for another penny, found none, and ended up having to buy a bottle of water to get a penny change for the second (successful) try. Yeah, I know, but I wasn’t prepared to emulate my least favorite part of The Amazing Race and start begging passersby for money this early in the game.
We skedaddled to the car and Mirko solved the word search as I drove. Traffic ground almost to a halt as we approached I-294 with two IDOT trucks blocking the two left lanes. At this point I began to worry that starting last might turn out to be a serious disadvantage, if earlier teams ended up skating through the course before traffic and general stupidity ramped up to greet us. With the exception of the damage around Wrigley, I don’t think this turned out to be a big factor, but the paranoia that resulted acted as a goad for the rest of the race.
Mirko tackled the Sudoku puzzle as we rode the el downtown. Giving us a puzzle to solve while riding the train worked well, turning transit time into a timed task helped keep things interesting. I’d never worked one before and I’m not sure if Mirko had, but after he ran into trouble with a couple of rows that couldn’t be made to work, I took a crack at it (after redrawing the grid, a lot of fun to do in pen on a bouncy elevated car), and we determined that a couple of numbers had been transposed on the first try. I’d be all proud over solving it, but yeah: Sudoku For Kids. 🙂 We’d pretty much worked out from the initial ‘1’ in the address that we’d been confident of from the beginning that the theater in question had to be either the Cadillac or the Oriental, but it was good to pin it down. At the Cadillac, we were informed by a woman waiting for her show to start that we were the sixth team to arrive (though she didn’t have a bathmat for us to stand on). I didn’t make much of this, as that really meant that we were just the sixth team she saw. I did find it cool throughout the day when random folks along the route noticed that there was something going on. It’s nice to make a random stranger’s day a little more interesting. Fortunately nobody invoked the default excuse of spoilsportism and tried to interfere for reasons of homeland security. (Man, you do something as harmless as hide an ammo can on the Las Vegas strip and you never hear the end of it.)