Comments on: FRAC 2 – Part 2

By: linnaeus

linnaeus — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 18:16:03 +0000

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.)

By: steviemaxwell

steviemaxwell — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 02:00:21 +0000

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.

By: fuzzytoedcollie

fuzzytoedcollie — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 23:09:26 +0000

This is fun to read. Engaging way to unwrap the FRAC 🙂
Thanks!

By: woofwoofarf

woofwoofarf — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 20:21:58 +0000

In reply to mstegosaurus.

Wheels…hubcaps…what’s the difference? 🙂
I fixed the name.

By: mstegosaurus

mstegosaurus — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 20:12:25 +0000

Hubcaps, damn you! Hubcaps!

By: ottr

ottr — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 18:29:52 +0000

In reply to woofwoofarf. 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 :)

By: woofwoofarf

woofwoofarf — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 16:52:03 +0000

In reply to riecka. 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 ;-)

By: woofwoofarf

woofwoofarf — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 16:51:02 +0000

In reply to ottr. 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!

By: riecka

riecka — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 16:34:49 +0000

In reply to ottr. me too :) eating lunch and scratching my head at the Sodoku lol I haven't sat down to try one of those yet ;)

By: ottr

ottr — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 16:17:07 +0000

Whee! This looks like loads of fun 🙂 I love reading the progress 😀