Day 2: DC to Baltimore, mid-day update

We'll post a full write-up later but thought you might like an update.

This has been a really fun day so far!  There are three teams playing, including us.  As far as we know we're well in the lead -- we haven't seen any other teams near the start, and occasionally someone at the site will mention that we're the first team there.  We got a handful of clues in D.C., similar to yesterday's, followed by a drive to Annapolis and maybe a dozen clues there, and now we're on to Baltimore for more.

Probably the most fun clue site was Xu Ming's "Monkeys Grasping for the Moon", a sculpture hanging in a stairwell at the Smithsonian.  It's a hanging series of interlinked "monkeys" which are all stylized versions of the word "monkey" written in different languages, including one in Braille.

At a bookstore in DC they had planted a false book with a hidden compartment, which was really cool to find -- we know we're going to find a copy of Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and we thought maybe there would be a paper inside, but opening it up it was completely hollow, with bags of goodies for each teams including an audio clue for the drive.

Walking around Annapolis was a lot of fun, it's not a place I would normally go but it's neat to see the historic old town and the Naval Academy campus.  (John Paul Jones' crypt: Surprisingly elaborate!)  As in DC the format was basically a set of photos (some obvious, some less so) with a poetic clue for each one.  The actual clues varied from ciphers (keyed by something on site) to simple word lookups.  One really fun was a courtyard with letters which had been rubbed to near invisibility, but the clue suggested we pour water on them -- when you do, the water immediately makes the words pop out.  Unfortunately we ran out of water bottles in a somewhat overexuberant attempt to drench the entire courtyard so certain team members had to practice their hawking skills...

DC and Annapolis both had metas, which we'll describe later.  We also took some photos and videos which we'll be posting later.  The clues have been solid -- some glitches and typos but nothing that impedes solving.  We've started pinging GC as we go from city to city just for their edification but basically the game is running itself as far as we can tell.

More later!