The Puzzle Hunt continues! Yesterday we had the first three checkpoints, now here’s the next three:

MCGRATH
The title of this puzzle is “Just Like The Dorsai“. The following text was printed below:

When you solve the puzzle and find the item, text or call and tell us:
What is the sum of these ladies?

Solution:
The trick to this puzzle was to realize that although all of the words appeared in the word search, certain of the letters were replace by the letter x (I have no idea how the capital letters got into the word search, but they have no bearing on the answer). When you take all of the letters that have been replaced by x’s and unscramble them, you get the word YOGURT. There is only one place in the hotel that has yogurt, and that is the cooler in the breakfast serving area:

The hint in the checkpoint title “Just Like The Dorsai” refers to the custom of the Dorsai Irregulars (a freelance security group in SF and furry fandoms) of giving out ear tags to fursuiters…ear tags like those shown on the cows. The sum of those numbers is 297 (though some teams summed up all ear tags shown, which was more like 594, but we accepted both answers).

TAKOTNA
The title of this puzzle is “Touch And Go“. The following text was printed below:

Text or call and tell us: Who is the leader of this group?
Solution:
This was a delightfully tricky puzzle, one of my favorite ones in the hunt. The trick was to realize that the dots were a series of 2×3 sets joined together…Braille! (thus the hint in the title.) We made up a somewhat professional-looking brochure called “So You Want To Learn Braille” and slipped a stack of them into the rack of various tourist brochures on the first floor of the hotel. Some teams found these, some teams needed a hint to find them (“You can often find useful information in the literature rack”). We didn’t anticipate what a couple of teams did: use the nameplates on the walls around the hotel (which included Braille) to decode the message the hard way. Anyway, the message decodes to “Chicago Symphony Orchestra”. There was a brochure for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the literature rack (right next to the Braille brochure!) that stated that the conductor (leader) of the CSO is Ricardo Mutti.

OPHIR
The title of this puzzle is “Upstairs, Downstairs“. The following text was printed below:

So.who is it? Text or call us when you know.
Solution:
The words unscramble into: WATER, CONNECTION, FIREHOSE, FLAMMABLE, EXTINGUISH, VALVE, and MANUFACTURER. Teams had to find a firehose connection valve; there was one in the southeast and one in the northwest stairwells, thus the clue in the checkpoint title. The manufacturer of the valves?

That would be Powhatan.

Tune in tomorrow for more checkpoints…