Thursday, October 2, 2008

HUNTERS R US CHALLENGE #1 - PART 1 REVIEW

I designed this challenge to have two parts to ensure that the participants did not go on a wild-goose-chase searching for answers in an unintended site. Just so I knew that you were all on the right path (site), the answer for Part 1 had to be submitted first in exchange for Part 2.

In Part 1 of the Hunt, I asked participants to locate and identify a precise location within a site that fitted the below clues.

Track down firstly a site that claims to have answers to your vacation needs,
Once there look for a gallery displaying prominent names highlighted for their past deeds,
Send me its precise location, and you will be halfway towards collecting the proceeds.

Those who were successful in Part 1, would then receive an additional five questions for Part 2, whose answers are prominently displayed in the same location identified in Part 1 (congratulations to the 16 of you who were able to progress to Part 2).

One of the pleasures of treasure hunting (cryptic version) is to derive what the setter wants for he/she almost always does not mean what he/she says. Part 1 is a good example. On surface reading, I seem to be looking for an award-winning company that specializes in Travel & Tours (and there were a couple of you who spontaneously went down that path).

On to the solution! Armed with a good thesaurus, you will soon be able to identify many possible substitutes for "answers" and "vacation", including the pair that I wanted, "solutions" and "time out". Hearing these words, those from within the treasure hunting circles, will immediately know where to head to. For those new to treasure hunting, perhaps it will take slightly longer for you to google these words to locate the right site. Subtly I included an additional confirming clue, Track down firstly, which simply requires the solver to look down (vertically) at the sentence header of each line to yield "TOS" again a familiar acronym in our circles.

The search does not end there! Those of you who supplied me with http://www.timeoutsolutions.com/ obviously did not receive any response. Mousing further around this page you will locate "Hall of Fame" which satisfies perfectly the second line of the question. Again for those of you who did not notice, I had another subtle clue placed not in the question, but instead in the title of the Challenge, Hunters R Us Challenge #1.

Those names prominently displayed in this site are all treasure hunters recognised for their past achievements in this weekend pastime. One time or another, all in the list were once novice hunters who persevered through thick and thin and learned the ropes along the way while analysing each mistake in detail to avoid recurrence. There are no short cuts to success, as each and every one in the list will gladly assert.

The solution I wanted for Part 1:

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