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So here we are. December 2005, in that weird week between Christmas and New Years, when most people are off work, and the annual Hot Springs, Arkansas tradition of Midnight Madness is played. This was officially the second year for Team Food although only the second year for two of it's members. I started putting together Team Food in like August. Our line up shifted around and members joined and dropped right up to the very last day. In the end we had exactly the ideal number of people and, what turned out to be a very efficient team. There was me (Stuart Feild), Rob Hill, Ed Corcoran, Lindsey Gaither and, Justin Stroman. Lindsey and I were the only returning alumn. It should also be mentioned that Beth Ibraham made our awesome TShirts and, had to drop out at the very last second. She was there in spirit and hopefully will be on Team Food in 2006.
Like I said we started way early this year. Last year, the whole team was put together as almost a last minute thought, so I was trying to get things going as early as possible. We started having weekly meeting in November. During the first meeting we watched the movie the game is based on. Aside from being a really excellent film, it helped explain a whole. I for one finally got a real sense of what Midnight Madness exactly was and, what we should plan for. Other meetings involved us working the pregame on the internet that started on Halloween with a DVD that we all got in the mail, and ended with an Ebay auction for bonus time during the real game. Aside from the meetings and the pregame, I studied maps and street names of Hot Springs as much as I could using Google earth and, practiced a whole lot with online puzzles and riddles. We also decided that it would be a good idea to spring for a centrally located motel room with wireless internet because we thought there was going to be 8 of us. Someone could always be at the hotel and be the life line to the internet. This didn't end up happening. Although the hotel was nice, it probably wasn't necessary.
Enough of this stuff here is how the game went. Keep in mind that I am writing this several months later using exstensive notes that Rob took during the game, pictures, and my own scattered memories. Oh yeah and, the game was run by last years winners, the Meat Machine, specifically Dave "don't call it a fucking scavenger hunt" Hill.
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The game began here at the Malco theater in downtown Hot Springs at about 7PM. We knew that the game was going to begin here from a note posted on Meat Machines website. We had heard, long before this was posted, rumors that the game would begin with a film and the first clue would involve our vehicles being hidden, which was a clue from "The Game". We tried really hard to think of some way to track our car down once it was hidden, but aside from renting some kind of homing beacon, we gave that whole idea up pretty quick.
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Here is the sign that was posted outside the Malco.
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When the theater opened up we lined up outside and began registering. We had to give all our names, phone numbers and, email adresses and think up a code word. I think the code word had something to do with teams calling in and claiming they were other teams last year whiched screwed things up royally. As far as I know the code words were never used. We also had to give up the the keys to our vehicles. I wish we had made a copy of the keys, that would have been really easy, why didn't I think of that?
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Here's team food seated within the the theater. From left to right: Rob, Justin, me, Lindsey and Ed took the picture. We had to sit here forever waiting for the game to start. During that time a video of last years game played on the screen, We were all pretty nervous and figity. After 30 minutes the video stopped and a new one started. After a quick skit about the pregame another video began. This one was of two guys driving around with a video camera welcoming us too MM2K5 and exsplaining the rules. You can see some of that video here at the begining of the 24 hours of angry apes video of the game. Its worth mentioning here that a new rule to the game was added, a time deduction from the final finish time for every call made to game control for hints. This meant that a team could litterally finish first but, if they had bugged Game Control to death all night, they might techniclly come in last. After a few minutes of watching these guys, we realized that this film had been shot only minutes earlier. They were driving each teams vehicle some where different and basically giving us a video map to find them. This was a pretty well conceived clue although a pain in the ass for us. I was glad that we had driven around a bit before the game and, gotten a good idea of the imeadiate area. When it was finally our vehicle Rob jotted down the directions. They parked it at the Embassy Suites about a quarter of a mile away from the theater.
When the video, ended we all ran like mad to find our car. We knew right where it was and I thought for sure we would be way ahead of everyone...
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We found it alright, one problem though, where are the fucking keys? This was our stupidest move all night. We sent Ed and Justin back to the theater to find the keys. Turns out Game Control had dumped them on the ground in front of the theater. We only lost about 20 minutes on this but, it didn't really matter in the long run. Every team was hung up on the first clue for well over two hours.
The first clue was a CD that was left on our front seat. It had a song from a really horrible rap group called Chrome Genz, who had also made an apearance in the pregame. You can listen to the song here. We listened to it well over 50 times, I never ever want to listen to it again. The song was about pharmaceuticals and being sick so, our first reactions were to go to the hospital and Walgreens. That was of coarse wrong. After 2 calls to Game Control we figured out that The way you solve this clue was first transcribe the entire song. There are numbers hidden in song. Those numbers transpose to letter which spelled GARBANZOS a bar in Hot Springs. A quick call to game control confirmed we were on the right track. We were off! For those keeping track it was around 11:00PM.
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Garbonzas was a tiny bar near the Haus Braus where alot of last years game took place. There was alot of teams in there milling around. The walls had pictures of fish on them and there was an aquarium with fish in it. We copied down some stuff on the back of one picture and traced one of them before we figured it out. The clue had to do with the number of fish in the tank and the way the fish in the pictures on the wall were facing. When we got this figured out it gave us a phone number. We called it and it said: "Hey, this is Fish-Meat. Come see us down at 104 Violet Street." Game Control confirmed this was correct and we took off.
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This place was fucked up. It was a big abandoned house that was being renovated or something. It was filled with weird stuff. We went through every room looking at the walls and in boxes and counters. Up stairs there was actual human shit all over the place! It was not cool. Little did we realize that the clue we were looking for was not even in the house, it was on the front porch!
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We snapped a shot of this Scrabble board and headed to the hotel to use the internet.
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The scrabble board had a map beneath it. Using the internet and a little outside help we figured out that every Scrabble peice had been used except the letter Q. All that need to be done was to figure out where a Q could go and still spell a word. "Qaid" was the logical answer. So we found the area on the map beneath the Q. We checked in with Game Control and were off to Jones School/Park.
There were a few other teams there who helped alot by shouting: "Here they are!" and running back to their car. The clue was an envelope with a picture of Yogi Bear and Yogi Beara. We headed again back to the hotel because we had forgotten to bring the phone book with us. Back at the hotel we found "Yogi's Bar". This clue was a little confusing because it was so obvious.
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We arrived at Yogi's Bar around 3:30AM. There were several team vehicles outside.
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This clue was pretty impressive and, the allusion to the movie wasn't lost on us. However, solving the clue had absolutely nothing to do with winning the game. Actually it was all about watching a little space ship that flew across the screen every once in a while. The lights on the space ship were blinking morse code. Luckily I had brought my trusty Boy Scout hand book and, we were able to decipher the code long before most of the teams who were bottle necked there. The letters spelled out "McClards" a pretty famous barbacue place in Hot Springs. Luckily Lindsey had eaten there at some point in the past and knew right where it was. We left Yogi's at about 4:20.
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We headed over to McClards. The building was of coarse locked up for the night, so we searched the parimeter. Lindsey found a stack of CDs in a real estate newspaper stand. We grabbed one and took off. Shortly after we left the other teams arrived. From what I understand they caused quite a ruckus outside of McClards. So much so that the HSPD was called. The drivers of the above vehicle were forced to drop out because the police told them that if they saw the vehicle again that night they would all be arrested.
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At this point, we decided to take a Waffle House stop to drink some coffee, eat some hashbrowns, and work on the new clue. The CD contained 6 songs, each had either a state or a city name in it. We called the support line but, got no answer. We called again later and were told to call back in like ten minutes. I think we got some more outside help on this one as well. We got the idea to figure out when each state joined the union, that gave us a 10 digit number, which was of coarse a phone number. We called it but got no answer. We left Waffle house and headed back to the Hotel.
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As you can see, we were all a little tired at this point. I had neglected to alter my sleeping pattern as I had planned to do. During this time Game Control had been dealing with the police at McClard's, that is why they had been unreachable. After a bit of searching around on the internet we finally got through to Game Control. They informed us that one of the states that we had was wrong. After reviewing the song again we found the correct state and called the number. It gave us an adress and were on the road again. It was around 6:35AM, going on 12 hours since the appointed time of gathering at the Malco.
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I don't have any pictures that go along with what happend next. We arrived at a suburban residence Where Dave Hill was frantically running the game armed with a cellphone and a small notebook. He told us that we needed to divide into three groups: The bravest, the smartest, and the strongest. Lindsey volunteered for bravest, me and Rob were strongest.
I was about to really regret eating a doulbe order of hashbrowns and omlet. Justin and Ed were given a plank with some numbers on it in 10 columns and 26 rows with the words "La cle est a l'interieur" on it to work with. Lindsey was put in a car and taken out to the middle of the Hot Springs National Forrest and essentially dropped off. Me and Rob were taken into the backyard of this house and told that for every hot dog and bun we both ate, (as in we both must eat a hot dog not one or the other) we would receive a card with a letter on it. We could stop when we guessed the word the cards were spelling. There was a fire and a picthure of water and we were told that we could cook the hot dogs before eating them. NO FUCKING TIME FOR THAT. I was dunking my hot dogs into the pitcher and shoving them down my throat as fast as I could. Neither one of us could guess the word. We ended up eating 5 hot dogs before Bob guessed the word SODOKU. Dave gave us a whole puncher. I'd like to point out this was all a real stroke of luck for us. Ed, being a vegitarian, would have been in a real dilema had he volunteered to be the strongest.
Meanwhile Justin and Ed had had absolutely no luck with plank and numbers, probably because it was only 1/3 of the puzzle. The brave Linsey had been hopping fences and cutting through backyards and had almost walked all the way back Daves house. Pretty damn impressive if you ask me. She had been given a slip of paper with 10 letters across and 26 letters down. It became obvious that the hole-punch was supposed to be used to punch out some of the letters. The paper would then be placed over the plank to get a code to unlock a safe. Sadly, we were told that the safe had been destroyed by another team. so we just had to call Game Control with the code to see if it was right and get the answer from them.
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This was all Lindsey and Bob so I'm just going to copy and paste from Bob's notes his explanation of the sudoku puzzle:
I knew a lot about the Sudoku puzzles, and we got to work on it. We
quickly narrowed it down from 10x26 to 9x9. Our first combination
number was in the area of 29 digits long, which GC said was wrong, but
that we were "on the right track" and that "cle is the clue". We tried
a couple different things, but still could only come up with these
terribly long numbers. Then I looked at it again, and noticed that
there was only 1 C, 1 L, and 1 E in that 9x9 area we had marked off.
It was the right code, please proceed to 402 Winona
It was about 8AM.
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401 Winona was a large empty warehouse. There were several teams already there. After running all over the place we finally settled down and found the clue. In the middle of the floor in the biggest room there was a pile of books and a pile of dominos. One team was hard at work aranging the dominos based on some sort of numbering system on the back. They seemed to be doing a pretty good job so we just let them keep going. There were maps with locations circled within the books. Ed and Rob took out our map of Hot Springs and circled all the locations in the books and wrote down the names of the books under them. Since the other teams were doing all the work for us, I sat down and started reading one of the books, Jenna Jameson's autobiography.
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The other teams finished the Dominos and here is what they looked like. There was like 20 people hovering over it trying to figure out what it was. Luckily one of us snapped a shot of it with a digi cam. The image was very apparent then.
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We all took off for the vehicle. Armed with our map that already had the Harry Potter adress on it. We left at about the exact same point as The Hagglers. It was litteraly a road race between us and them to the next clue. Definatly the most exciting moment of Midnight Madness for me. Us and them, cutting each other off, flying through oblivious morning traffic in front of Bathhouse Row.
At the adress I was about to run up to a house and open somebodys door and walk right in. Lukcily, a member of the Hagglers was across the street opening a newspaper box, where they found the clue we were looking for. We all ran across the street. I was very thankful that I had thought to bring a handful of quaters with me.
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This was the last clue, an envelope full of pictures with letters on the back. It was aproximately 9AM when we got back to the hotel to work on this. Unfortunate for us, it was the one that fucked us over. We worked on this forever! We tried everything. We noticed that edges of some of the pictures had parts of the other pictures on them and we thought that maybe it was an indication of how they fit together, Game Control said no it wasn't that complicated. We even managed to find alot of the pictures on Google Image search. But finally we had to be told that they were NFL football teams. We had to rank them however you rank football teams. None of us knew anything about sports. Got to bring a sports fan next year. When assembled correctly the letters spelled "ENDXOFXABRIANA". And we were off.
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We were a little Disheartened to learn that we were the second to last team to arrive, Pinky and the Brains were still behind us. The finish line was out on a peer where Meat Machine was busy tabulating the results. When we walked out there we were told that in fact we had called in the least amount of clues we had been in first place most of the game. That was a real surpise to us given that last year we had come in last. We crossed the finish line at 10:52AM and our official finish time after penalties was 12:52PM.
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Those last couple of hints about the NFL clue from Game Control had pushed us out of first place to third. Where's My Dynamite ended up coming in first, 24 Hours of Angry Apes second.
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So that's it, MM2k5. If you'd like to know more about the team food MM2K5 exsperience, you might want to read through Rob's notes. They were written on a few days afterward so they are a whole lot more thurough.
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