Day 1 - Washington D.C.

We woke up at 8:00am this morning to give ourselves time to shower, get breakfast and make our way over to the US Navy Memorial by 10:00am. That's early for me at any time and even worse when my body still thinks it's 3 hours earlier. I had anticipated this problem and cleverly stayed up all Thursday night so that I would be exhausted enough to fall asleep at a reasonable hour. Unfortunately Rich kept me up posing for a fashion shoot (that was never to be seen by any other eyes!) and my plan failed miserably.

We were the first team to arrive at the Lonely Sailor statue and we had a chance to talk with Josh Czarda a bit about some of the logistics of the race. Other teams trickled in (I think there were a total of 7) and it seemed like either Rich or Todd knew someone on every one. I guess a lot of the same teams played in the first GAR and/or other Ravenchase events. One of the teams, dubbed by Rich as the "Ravenchase Veterans", was composed of some members of the Kilts and A-Squared, the two teams that were the most competitive in the last go-around. They were immediately singled out as the team to beat. Josh had told us that this leg would be the easiest and we worried that the veterans' local knowledge might give them the edge. Also, this was the only leg that the veterans would be playing and as Rich pointed out, no matter how good we do on later legs, losing this one would put an asterisk next to our final results.

The starting time came and Josh opened a chest and handed each team 3 rolled-up sheets of paper and a blacklight. One of the papers consisted of 15 photos of various sites around the Mall, each with a poem indicating how to extract an answer from the appropriate location. Another page contained a half-filled in crossword with no clues and the last was the answer sheet along with indices into the answer words that would give us the location where we would find the next set of clues.

We sat down to identify the locations and plan the most efficient route because as I learned while exploring yesterday, the Mall is long! You do not want to walk from the Capitol Building to the Lincoln Memorial only to learn you would have to backtrack to a missed location. Also, even though the meta might be solved with much fewer than all the clues, any missed answers carried a 30 minute penalty each. Thankfully, Todd's area knowledge and Dan's excellent Google skills meant we were able to identify 11 of the sites relatively quickly. Still, at this point every other team had left and we felt it best to head out and hope to find the remaining 4 locations en route.

This strategy started off well as in the midst of showing us a picture of a building to be on the lookout for, Todd noticed that we were standing right next to it. We joined 3 or 4 other teams looking at the base of a statue where two concentric rings of symbols were located. The clue for the site had the same symbols (or at least ones that looked vaguely similar) but with each one assigned a letter. We took the letters in order around the circle and got YRISCIPHEROROLY! from the outer circle and FOURAESW from the inner circle which wasn't quite as fantastic as we were hoping for. Several of the symbols were faded and tough to positively ID but a little tweaking and generous allowing of alternate letters got us to YOUR ANSWER IS CIPHEROFOLY! which I thought was close enough to CIPHER OF OLD to move on to another site. But we would never be entirely sure of this answer until we turned it in. (Though Josh informed us later that we can always call and confirm without penalty.)

The next few sites were more straightforward, just requiring us to locate certain sculptures and take the clued word from each one. Maybe the fourth or fifth site we went to gave us our first multi-part clue and the first Vigenere cipher of the day. Our clue page had some ciphertext and we were instructed to use the name associated with the statue as the keyword. Unfortunately, there were several names on the plaque and we weren't sure whether to use the full name or just the last name. I started doing the Vigenere by hand but was only getting garbage so Rich pulled out his laptop (that he was advised not to bring) so we could quickly try a bunch of keys. The key ended up being POSTBALZAC and gave us further instructions to shine our light on the wishing tree wish. Rich remembered that the wishing tree was nearby and so we headed there.

I was dismayed when we arrived because the wishing tree turned out to be a tree where visitors would write a wish on a tag and tie it somehwere on one of the branches. There were a thousand or so such tags (Dan assures me there are much less) and I was sure it would take hours to find the right one. Nothing to do but give it a shot and so we all started reading them looking for some indication of the one we wanted like a Ravenchase logo or something. I felt a little weird reading other people's wishes, but that didn't stop me from sharing them aloud with my teammates. This was the source of the random out-of-context quote today; one of the tags said "I wish Ian would ask me to marry him." Not that I would be anything but flattered if Ian Tullis did propose but I don't want to put any pressure on him.

We were searching for 15 minutes or so and I was doing some calculations about whether the best strategy would be to just take the 30 minute hit, but Dan decided to just start shining the blacklight on every clue as he read them. Soon after he located the right one (we were later told there were 5 on the tree), a blank tag with HEART AND SOUL written in invisible ink. We were very relieved to have found this answer and thought that we would pick up some time on other teams who might not be as lucky.

The next few clues had us walking in and around the various Smithsonian buildings. We showed our 3 unidentified photos to the Information Desk in the Smithsonian Castle and the friendly lady knew 2 of them right away. She also informed us that we were the 3rd team to ask her help. We hadn't seen another team in a while and with every team determining their own route, we couldn't know if we were behind any. But it felt like we were very efficient on these early clues; I don't think we wasted much time at all.

The last 6 clues referenced 5 locations far away near the Lincoln Memorial and the one location that had resisted all our attempts to find. Rich had actually cracked the meta when we only had 7 or 8 clues answered and from backsolving, we knew the unknown location's answer was M.ST.RY which was certainly either MASTERY or MYSTERY. I made the argument that the word would probably be found on one of the monuments and so was likely to be MASTERY. This helped us make the call to continue on our route and hope to find the last location on the way.

We solved a neat clue at the WWII Memorial that had Todd and I taping together tiny pieces of paper into the shape of one of the star shapes on the ground there. The extraction phrase then led us to a cute Kilroy was here! graffiti. Meanwhile, Rich and Dan had continued searching for the last monument and after scouring www.dcmemorials.com, Dan finally found it. And luckily enough, the monument turned out to be right near where we currently were. We had actually passed it a little bit; Rich had pointed it out as a possibility earlier but we had all decided he was crazy. You might think we should've just checked every memorial we saw, but it turns out there are a damn lot of them in DC. This clue consisted of 48 letters that had been encoded using a transposition cipher. The grate at the bottom of the memorial had a nice pattern that we could use to place the letters and read the resulting phrase. And wouldn't you know it, the answer was MYSTERY. So a 30 minute penalty was narrowly avoided.

We traveled to the FDR Memorial before finishing the first set of puzzles at the Lincoln Memorial (every damn president gets a memorial it seems... except for Van Buren; he never gets any respect). By this time, Todd had finished off the half-filled crossword which gave us the password we would need to get the second set of puzzles. We jumped in a taxi and headed over to a bar near Dupont Circle.

When we arrived, we expected to find Josh or some other member of GC but the bar was empty except for the bartender. We asked her if anyone else was there and showed her our completed meta to see if she could help us but she just gave us that confused stare I've become so used to during puzzlehunts. But we had nothing else to do and so Todd kind of half-mumbled our password, "horses", to her. I thought for sure we would be asked to leave but instead she whipped out a new set of rolled-up puzzles. One page contained 3 more clues that involved visiting nearby memorials though there were also a bunch of strange looking symbols that had been written between the clues. The other page consisted of a complicated-looking maze with two levels. That looked pretty daunting but it turned out to not be so bad and Todd and I quickly completed it giving us a long Vigenere code to use with the answers from the last 3 puzzles. While we worked on the maze, Rich and Dan found the last three memorials and we were on our way again.

This part of the leg went very smoothly even though we later found out that Josh had to rewrite this entire section last night because his previous puzzles had relied on location data that had changed. The best part of this last group of puzzles was solving one of the memorial clues to HEAT SYMBOLS. We realized this must refer to the strange symbols on our clue page and so we rushed into a convenience store to buy a lighter. Rich started trying to light our clue page on fire while standing at the counter inside which I'm sure would have led to the whole block burning down and the rest of my team in jail. (Not me; as soon as Rich held up the lighter, I started backing away and exuding an "I'm not with them" vibe.) Wisely, either Todd or Dan was able to convince Rich to move to a safer locale. Once outside, a careful application of the lighter's heat caused the symbols to magically (Dan assures me it wasn't actually magic) disappear revealing the answer phrase. Pretty cool.

Rich plugged our last three answer phrases and the long ciphertext from the maze into his Vigenere solver and we were rewarded with our final location. We raced there and found Josh waiting for us. He checked over all our answers and congratulated us on being first! Total time for the first leg: 4:10. The next team to arrive was the Ravenchase Veterans about 1:15 later. We chatted with them a while before leaving to clean up a bit at our hotel and then get some late lunch. While doing so, we ran into the duo who comprise the only other team completing the entire race. They were just finishing up a couple hours behind us. Hopefully, they enjoyed themselves.

Todd gave us a tour around Old Town Alexandria and the Motley Fool headquarters where we solved a couple PandA puzzles (you know, just to keep in fighting shape). Then we met his lovely family for dinner where his wife, Ann, explained that Todd was needed at home in a few days. We gave the impression that we were completely understanding and agreeable but little does she or Todd know, we have no intention of letting him leave early. We haven't yet worked out the exact plan; drugging him was discussed but we don't want to interfere with his solving ability.

After dinner we got some ice cream and Todd offered to wash our team shirts for us tonight. However, both Rich and I were still wearing them and neither of us had a change of shirt handy. A simple though awkward solution presented itself. Pictures were taken and I hope for everyone's sake that they never see the light of day.

Anyway, a fun day all around and I look forward to tomorrow!