1. notebook
2. Cross
3. Sing Sing
4. microdot [?]
5. Worldcom
Zeus writes that "you'll find what you're looking for
in the end."
Taking the last syllable from each word (and the only
syllable from answer #2), you get "book cross sing dot
com".
At http://www.bookcrossing.com,
if you searched for screen name "YABA4", you would find
that on their bookshelf
http://www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/YABA4
the only release that had been made was "Chitty Chitty
Bang Bang" by Ian Fleming (also the author of all the
James Bond books).
In the journal entry,
http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/163486
was the note "A lovely book about a magical car. We
think you'll find Page 18 particularly interesting."
Alternatively, if you searched for books about Ian Fleming
that had been released in San Francisco prior to the hint
being posted (i.e., prior to early August 2002), you would
find the same.
On page 18, there's a picture of the car featured in
the book which shows its license plate - this license
plate was the answer for clue #4.
Some folks were confused by the fact that there was also
a journal entry stating that the book had been released
on Saturday, July 20, 2002 at Peet's Coffee & Tea on Fillmore
at Sacramento in San Francisco, California USA. Books
released "into the wild" are usually taken the
same day by some serendipitous stranger, so we did not
mean for teams to travel to Peet's and look for the book.
Brian, the manager there, reported that several teams
had come in asking for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and had
seemed very disappointed when he said he didn't have it!
Thus a note was added on the t-hunts hint page, stating
that "Several people have written to us off-line regarding
hint 3. Without giving anything away for people who have
not yet solved it, let us say that this clue does *not*
require a visit to a physical location. Although a visit
to your local public library after solving the hint might
prove fruitful :)
Survey responses regarding this hint expressed some frustration
by those who had solved it, given that the book was available
at the clue hub and teams were told which page to turn
to.
We realize this was less than fair for those teams who
actually solved the hint ahead of time; but Caffe Malvina,
the clue hub, was extremely crowded with teams waiting
to talk to M, and we needed to speed up the logjam by
getting teams through faster.
So, even though we had brought five copies of the book,
M resorted to telling teams what page to turn to, rather
than letting them thumb through the book in search of
it.
We were also concerned that many teams who had not solved
the pre-game hint would not find the page in the book,
and thus would not get credit for the clue location when
they had legitimately solved clue #4.
In retrospect, it might have been better to have a regular
plate at clue site #4 and have made the license plate
in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" worth bonus points instead.
Next time…!
