Scavengeroogle: A Google Maps Scavenger Hunt To Waste More Of Your Time On

Well, I’m a bit surprised so many people were able to pick out the synonyms correctly from the clue so quickly. Schlage was not too bad, but you had to translate “litigate” twice. Litigate = Sue = Soo, or rather Sault? I’m bad with French, I would have pronounced Sault like “salt”… At least people seemed to like this clue which was straight from Brian G. I didn’t tamper with it at all!

Phil M’s process follows:

Well this sure was a tough one at first. I figured out that Schlage had to do with locks. Thats why I began to look in the great lakes area since there are a lot of locks. I couldn’t quite figure out what Litigate had to do with until i thought about the locks in Sault Ste. Marie. Sault is pronounced like Soo, which sounds like Sue or to file suit…. or Litigate. So there you go… Litigate Schlage = Sault Locks.

There were the usual fast finds:

Mike M

deciphered the clue, found it right away, 3 min

Mark L

Piece of cake…. 5 min…… clue was great!

Jim M

Clever clue, but got it immediately - less than 1 minute to solve.

I would have been completely lost, because I’ve never heard of Sault Ste Marie ever before. Plus, we don’t have a lot of water locks here in California… unless you count the aqueducts but I don’t think there are too many ships sailing down the Owens or Colorado Rivers… I’ve floated down part of the Colorado in an inner tube, however.

Some interesting herrings. Josh C wrote:

Took me about 30 seconds after the region drop. Started out looking for some sort of German connection (because of Schlage.) eventually figured out Sue Locks, but had no idea where to look. After I found Soo Locks in Michigan I was kicking myself.

But Jon G got help from his mom to get past them:

Right off the bat I thought it was Suez (Canal) locks from the clue but it was very low-res at the Suez Canal. Tried to search for other canals with locks and finally remembered my mom took a trip to Sault Ste. Marie a couple years ago. She talked about all these big barges passing through some locks there which are called the Soo Locks. So take it from me, it DOES pay to listen to your mom.

Mike J went camping to find it:

Didn’t start until after the region drop, guessed the second part of the clue meant lock, first part was a legal word. Saw a Soo Locks campground on a map program and behold there’s a section of water the right color and there’s the ship.

Hey this is two in a row for me! Yea

Some people knew the area… interesting, so what is “UP” actually? I’m guessing (through google searches) that it means Upper Peninsula Michigan? Josh W:

I figured that the clue was for “sue locks” which became Sioux Locks. Those are north of the UP of Michigan.

I found it a little to the left of Sault ste. marie, ontario, a little west of highway 75, basically took some plodding around.

Michael J:

I know the secone clue was Locks, so I just started searching for different locks around the country when it hit me. I knew about Sault St. Marie.

and Shawn D:

On a roll this week. Took about 3 minutes. Just say ya to the UP, eh? (Michiganders would undestand that.)

I saw that car chase on the news here in Dallas. Man, that traffic looked ugly.

Texas car chases usually end much less peacefully.

Yikes, I can only imagine what the cops do in car chases around Texas! I would assume they might take a more direct approach?

JaredR gets magic crunchy bonus points in addition to his normal solution points for finding a ballpoint pen that looks mighty similar to the one that we had in our search today:

I guess it doesnt count but this is almost the same.

Alternate Ballpoint Pen

Yeah, it is even in the same general area… this is one reason why ships can be difficult as clues. Airplanes are even worse sometimes…

Oh boy, Friday at 9 cannot come soon enough for me. See you then…

Solution to “Ballpoint Pen”