Midnight Madness

Last weekend, Los Jefes played in the Midnight Madness Game, hosted by Snout and Drunken Spiders. This was an invitation-only Game where teams got one invitation for themselves and one to give to "a friend". We managed to snag Mystic Fish's extra invitation when we heard they were looking for someone who wanted it. Not all the regular Jefes could make it due to the short notice, so a couple of Silly Hat Brigade members rounded out our team (thanks Jett & Jackie!).

It's hard to go wrong theming a Game around Midnight Madness because the theme itself is so entertaining and GC did a great job of keeping the event tightly themed. We looked through telescopes (sort of), played commercial jingles, looked for a necklace in someone's cleavage, played mini-golf and just barely missed the chance to beat Star Fire! GC even arranged for Don Luskin, one of the people who inspired the movie, to chat with teams before the event. This was announced by GC holding up this shot from the movie credits, which initially resulted in teams trying to "solve" the credits page and completely ignoring our special guest.

The Puzzles

Midnight Madness Trivia - After a fabulous a capella rendition of the movie theme song, GC had teams in turn have one representative answer a trivia question about the movie in order to get the first clue. Of our team, Cyndy had watched the movie the most times (five), so she fielded our question (What vehicle did the white team use? Answer: mopeds).

Cryptic Card - The first clue was a card containing cryptic clues that resolved to Vista Slope near Google HQ. This was a nice, quick group solve for us.

Telescopes - From the top of a hill, we had to spot sets of 3 equations posted in the windows of nearby buildings. The equations resolved to a combination for a locked mailbox. Once it got dark, GC provided telescope-like tubes with the equations pasted at the end to replace the data in the windows. This was an unfortunate early clue because it seemed all of the teams were blocked on it. We eventually called GC for guidance and I don't think we would have ever thought to do what the puzzle required, which was to substitute 3 for X in each of the equations and add the results to get the combination.

It's Probably Not FAGABEEFE - From there, we went to Acorn's house where we got sheet music with snippets of commercial jingles, each with one incorrect note. Keyboards were provided, but our piano skills were lacking, so we retired to the van to use a tool to play the jingles for us. We combined the wrong notes into a final jingle to produce the answer (Klondike Bar), but unfortunately none of us recognized the Klondike Bar jingle so we called GC and played it for them to get access to Acorn's downstairs bar where we were given actual Klondike Bars (yum!), one of which contained the next location. We also had a bit of real-life drama at this location when a police car pulled up behind our van and a cop questioned us about what we were doing. Apparently, some of Acorn's neighbors think people sitting in vans with laptops in the middle of the night look suspicious. Go figure.

The Brewery - Here's where the cops should have thought we looked suspicious. The clue directed us to look behind a brewpub and their back patio door was open, so this resulted in teams roaming through the patio and outside storage area of the brewpub. Jeff finally gave up and called GC who directed him near a plant outside the walls of the patio (oops!). Direct quote from Jeff while retrieving the clue: "Ow, ow, ow, it's in a friggin' cactus!" The clue was 3 nonograms which gave the rebus Cards - Null - Coffee, for our next location, Cardinal Coffee.

Look Between the Two Giant Melons - True to the movie, the next clue was located on a necklace worn by a woman with considerable cleavage. The letters anagramed to "The Metro", which we tried to interpret as a golf location since by then we knew we were closely following the movie. Turns out we weren't looking for Metropolitan Golf Links in Oakland, but instead for the entertainment paper rack (heh heh, rack) in the lobby very clearly labelled, "The Metro". Inserted in the papers were word searches that contained every synonym you could possibly think of for boobs. The sheer silliness of this clue just might have made it my favorite.

Hitch a Ride with the Old People - This featured an "old" man and woman (who I believe I recall as Cassandra Cross in the Hogwarts Game and she was equally entertaining here) who offered us a ride around a parking lot while telling us a rambly story. The rest of the puzzle was finding the pattern in the words they had trouble recalling.

Mini-Golf - This was a series of 18 images at each of the holes of a mini-golf course. Unfortunately, we missed hearing the recording at one hole instructing us to play air hockey (the air hockey table had a card with the form of the answer word for each hole) and another recording that said "Fore!" didn't strike us as noteworthy given that we were playing golf. After a nudge from GC, Cyndy quickly pieced the information together and realized we needed to come up with words starting with "Fore" for each of the images (e.g. "Foresee" at right).

What, You Mean It Really Is the Band? - At the Emeryville train station, we listened to mixed songs (one on the left channel and one on the right) and had to look for common sounds in the band name and song title of each pair. The clue included some unfortunate DJ banter referring to "Madness, no, NOT THE BAND, Midnight Madness!" which we (and other teams) took as a hint that the clue was not looking for anything related the band. A call to GC put us on the right path and we headed to the next location.

Dun Worry, I Hide Body - Dancing Hare Krishnas handed us a failed clue which they were skipping teams over (although it did have a fabulous picture of Curtis Chen in a Leon wig) and the next clue which was LOLcats (yay!) with proofreading notation (ugh!).

Beat Star Fire - We were just walking up to get our chance to defeat the Star Fire game when GC texted all teams to head to the final clue since the first team had made it there. No Star Fire for us.

Big Balls - The final clue took us back to Stanford where teams chased large, white inflatable balls with data written on them around a field while GC and other team members tried to chase us away with large inflatable hammers. Next step was to sort the data into sets and quotes, each with a missing word. This gave us what we read as ONE TTA HARRIS. GC kindly informed us we were really looking for the Onetta Harris community center.

After munchies and chatting at the wrap-up, we headed back to Oakland Airport to fly home. It wound up being a long wait, since our 7:42 flight was delayed to 8:50pm. This gave us just enough time to solve one of the Melbourne University Online PuzzleHunt puzzles (blog post to follow) which were posted at 7:00 before boarding our flight home.