Stuart, Stroman and I left Little Rock around 12:15. After getting to
Hot Springs, we hit up the information center to get all the brochures
and handouts we could. Then, we made our way over to the Chamber of
Commerce to get some road maps. By the time we got done with all this,
we headed back over to Phil's to meet with Lindsey and Ed. I'm still
in awe of a 2lb burger. After lunch, we made our way over to the hotel
to drop off and settle in a little.

Finally arrive at the Malco around 5:30 or so, first ones there. Other
teams start arriving a little before 6. The first team was pretty
identifiable with nice suits and red hats: Where's My Dynamite. Very
friendly, they came over with a camcorder to talk to us and ask a few
questions. Then, the Hagglers showed up. Then more teams showed up
afterwards. Finally around 6:45, we're allowed to go into the theatre.
Each team signed in, and we made our way to the theatre.

As we come in, there's footage that MeatMachine took as they filmed
last year's game. Very interesting stuff last year. I particularly
liked the Ouija Board and the Kroger clues. After a very long time,
finally some new footage comes on. It's Game Control, and they're
hanging out in a parking lot. Then, they get into a car and drive off
while the camera follows behind in another car. They go on to explain
the rules, the dos and donts. The car parks, and it cuts back to the
parking lot. Then it starts to set in that "Hey... those are OUR
cars!"

Finally around 9pm, we're free to go and everyone makes a mad dash to
the Embassy Suites (where our car was located). We make it all the way
there, and realize that the keys are still at the theatre. Stroman and
Ed are 'elected' to go get the keys back while the 3 of us wait.
Shortly though, they return with keys in hand. We finally get to
investigate our first clue, a cd left in the passenger seat.

Chrome Genz lays down a hot track about pharmaceuticals. The immediate
reaction is to go to Walgreens, where we meet a couple other teams
sitting outside. We head over to the hospital, but nothing happened
there. We head back to the theatre, where 24 Hours of Angry Apes is
still sitting there with the other team (whos name I forgot). We call
in for the first clue, which doesn't help too much. At 10:50, we call
in for the second clue, and about this time, the other team quickly
gets in their van and drives off. Within 10 minutes though, we decided
that GACBANZOS should read GARBANZOS and we make our way over to
Garbanzos bar.

Upon entering, we're greeted with a clusterfuck of teams crammed into
a small room, decorated with many pictures of fish, and decored with a
a fishtank on the counter. Stroman and I order beers, and try to talk
some information out of the bartender, but to no avail. Lots of
strange things are going on here, we trace one of the pictures, copy
down numbers from the back of one, and it turns out later than none of
this really mattered. What mattered was the numbers of each type of
fish in the tank, and the order of the corresponding pictures in the
room. When done properly, it gave us a new phone number. When I called
it, it simply said "Hey, this is Fish-Meat. Come see us down at 104
Violet Street", and just like that, we were off. We left at 12:45,
probably arrived at about 12:50.

By the time we get here, there's a few teams in this old house looking
around. Theres a couple people outside too, presumably working on
details they gathered from in the house. This place is a little
creepy. The only dated item I could find was a wall-calendar from
2002. The ceiling was falling apart. There was spray-painted graffiti
on the floor. There was shit in the bath tub. And closet. And steps.
And floor. According to Ed, there was also some other unspeakable
horror in a bucket. It wasn't until 1:10 that we went outside, and saw
that the clue was actually outside on the porch the whole time. It was
a scrabble game, played on a clear board, and placed over a map. We
got a good few snapshots, transcribed all the letters, and went back
to the hotel to work it out around 1:30.

We did have a little outside help, that told us to look for what
letter was missing, and where it was supposed to go. Thanks to the
internet, we found out the missing letter was Q, and somehow it was
supposed to make a word called Qaid. What the fuck kind of word is
that? The area of the map where the Q belonged was marked, and we made
our way to Jones School/Park.

At 3AM, we get to the park with the advance knowledge that the clue
was "far away from the school, at the corner of the park", so
thankfully it didnt take long to grab the clue and run away. Enclosed
was a picture of Yogi Berra, and a picture of Yogi Bear. A quick thumb
through the phone-book confirmed a place called "Yogi's Club", and we
were off again.

We arrived at the club around 3:30, round the corner, and see a mass
of people around an arcade machine. A cleverly titled game called
Midnight Meteroids awaited us. Based on the old game Asteroids, a
small ship had to shoot oddly shaped polygons to move on to the next
level. One of the guys from another team there was nice enough to clue
us in that it involved morse code. It comes to light that theres a
small white spaceship that flies by shooting at you, and it blinks in
morse code as it flies by. This proved pretty damned difficult,
because of its fast blinking, short screentime, and the rumour that
you only get 1 letter per level. When its my turn to step up, I manage
to get through the first 5 levels, and we get a few random letters out
of it. I step down to let someone else have a chance while we try
working on our letters so far. I eventually make it back up there to
try again, and catch on to something that no one else seemed to
realize: The letters weren't level specific. They rotated and repeated
based on every time it came on the screen. It spelled out McClards, as
in the barbecue place. We checked its location and were back on the
road.

We left Yogis at about 4am, and got to McClards shortly afterwards. It
was closed, but had a few lights on and about. We looked everywhere we
could, until Stuart and Lindsey found some cds in a Real Estate
Brochure Box, by the newspaper stand. By 4:20 we had our next clue and
were moving on. We also decided to stop off at Waffle House and get
some food while we listen to this cd.

Unlike the previous one, this cd had 6 tracks, by various groups.
Stuart got on his laptop, and listened to it a bit more while we ate.
Finally left about 5:15. After some in-depth listening, we deduced
that each song had the name of a City or State in it, but we still
didn't know what to make of it and decided to call in a clue. Ed (I
think it was ed) called the hint line, and they didn't answer. Tried
back, no response. Waited about 10 minutes, and finally got through,
and had a very short and brief conversation with GC. Apparently, the
police got involved and they were in the middle of handling it, so we
just had to "sit tight and (they'll) call (us) back". It would later
come to light that it was something involved with McClards, and
probably happened right after we left. I don't know all the details,
but from what I heard, the team was told "We'll let you off this time,
but if we see you anymore tonight we'll arrest you" and they quickly
dropped out.

While all this is going on, we go back to the hotel to work on these
songs. Again, we had a bit of outside assistance on this one. We found
out it involved the order in which the states had been admitted to the
union. Stuart and Stroman did a bit of googling, and found the
information we were looking for. It gave us 10 digits which is just
enough for a phone number. Tried calling it, no answer. We went
through a couple variations on the number, but with no luck. Then we
got the hint that one of our states was wrong. After re-listening to
the song, we got the correct state, the correct phone number, and the
address to the next clue. We got the clue at 4:20, and its 6:35 when
we leave the hotel.

It takes us 10 minutes to get to our destination, and when we do, Dave
is there to greet us. Very nice guy, GREAT guy. He tells us that we
have to divide ourselves into 3 groups: Bravery, Strength, and
Intelligence. A couple minutes of discussing, and we decide that
Lindsey should go for Bravery, Stuart and I would be Strength, and
Stroman and Ed would represent Intelligence. I'll let the 3 of them
account for their own story though, and just pick up with Stuart and
I.

Dave takes us to the backyard of this house, where we meet up with the
Hagglers. Also, we get directed to a small table with a couple
packages of hotdogs and a couple packages of hotdog buns. Dave tells
Stuart and me that for each hotdog we BOTH eat, we get 1 card with a
letter on it. One of the girls from the Hagglers leans over and tells
us that theres only 6 though. At this point, I really regretted eating
anything at Waffle House. It sucked, but we just decided to eat them
fast and get it over with. Dave had a small wood-oven set up and going
to cook the dogs, but we were more concerned with speed so we didnt
both to cook them at all. The first 2 went down easy enough, made
easier by soaking the buns in water. The third started to slow me
down. The 4th one tasted TERRIBLE and I started to feel sick and
too-full. We started to look at each other and considered just taking
the 4 letters and winging it as best we could. We let it sit a couple
minutes, then got back in and ate #5. It was the worst hotdog I've
ever eaten in my life, hands down. Cold, wet, slimy, and it just
tasted terrible. We got our 5th letter, looked at them a couple
minutes: S.... U.... D.... O.... K..... Sudoku! We have to do a sudoku
puzzle! I had saved us the effort of eating another hotdog, and the
embarassment of puking all over everything. Even so, we both reeeeally
thought about spewing just to be empty and feel better (Stuart did
later after we got back to the hotel). We were rewarded with a
hole-puncher, and went off to get Ed and Stroman. They had a small
wooden block with a piece of paper attached to its face. The paper had
tons of numbers on it: 10 columns and 26 rows, with the handwritten
words at the bottom: La cle est a l'interieur. The 4 of us looked at
it for a minute, then went off to rescue Lindsey.

After picking her up at the CoC, we make it back to the hotel at 7:20.
Lindsey had acquired a slip of paper with 10 letters across and 26
letters down. It was a perfect fit to go over the numbered block
Subteam-Brains got. The obvious answer was that the hole-punch was to
be used to punch out some of the letters and place it over the block
to get a "code" that would be used to unlock a safe. Sadly, the safe
had gotten broken at some point, so we just had to call GC with the
code to see if it was right and get the answer from them. Lindsey and
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. We were out of
there at 8AM.

402 Winona was a large, empty warehouse. We ran in quickly to see 2
teams working on puzzles in the middle of the room. We turned the
warehouse upside down looking for other sets of puzzles, and couldnt
find anything. Finally, we just asked a team where we could get one,
and they told us that everything had just been lying out there, and we
could just help them. This clue was split into 2 parts: 1 involved
about a dozen or so books with maps inside of them . Each map had a
single location marked in them, and each location varied from book to
book. The other half of the clue involved about a hundred or so
double-9 dominos. On the back of each domino was 2 Letter/Number
combinations. While Ed and I copied all the locations from the books
to our map, other teams were all working on the dominos. We finished
marking them about the time they finished the dominos. It formed an
odd looking picture when it was complete.

"It looks like boobs!"
"It looks kind like a devil. Do we get to dance again?"
"I think its a face"
"It looks like Harry Potter!"

Immediately, Ed and I locked eyes and scrambled to get the Harry
Potter book we had gotten the map-location from earlier. We got it,
and ran out of the door as fast as we could. Then a couple minutes
later the team never came out, so we had to go get them out and to the
next clue. At 8:35, we're on the road to Ravene Street. This is also
when MM starts getting really fast and down-to-the-wire-esque.

On our way there, we pass the Hagglers's, and speed around them. Then
a few minutes later, they pass us again. We both arrive to the
location about the same time, and everyone is running everywhere to
get the clue. It was in a box for the Sentinel Newspaper. Our final
clue: 14 pictures of different things, each with a letter on the back.
We head back to the hotel and start cracking.

We made it back right around 9AM, 12 hours after we started. Fatigue
was setting in, morale was dropping, and this clue sucked hard. We
called in for 1 hint, and it didn't help. We called in for another
hint, and it didn't help. The 3rd helped quite a bit though, all the
pictures involved different football teams. Ed and I started
collaborating to come up with each name from each time and
alphabetizing them, but it still didnt spell anything. We phoned in
our 4th hint, and found out it wasnt about alphabetization, it was
about their NFL ranking. Finally, we got a proper phrase from it:
ENDXOFXABRIANA. Looked up abriana street, and it was a dead end.

At exactly 10:52 we crossed the finish line, and went ouf to a small
dock to talk to GC. Everyone else was already there though, and we had
come in last. That was a huge blow to our team. As we talked to Dave
though, there were 3 teams to drop out, and there was still 1 team
that hadn't finished, so we werent last! That was a bit better. Then
he drops the bomb on us that since we called in so few clues, we were
in first place for most of the game. If it hadn't been for that last
clue, we would have only had 4 clues and possibly have come in first.
Accounting for time penalties, our official completed time was 12:52.
We came in 3rd place overall, and got an award for Fewest Hints Called
In. That was pretty cool, we were all a bit stunned, I think.

So yeah, that's my summation of MM2K5. All of this was compiled from
my notes and my memory, but its damn near 4AM and I'm exhausted and
tired of writing. If youve any questions or whatever, just say so.
Also, I'd like to formally request the Chrome Genz song.