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

I don’t know what it is with my host provider lately, they seem to consistently plan downtimes right when the solution is about to go up and the game is about to end. One more reason not to have a “timed” solution; I’m getting kind of weary of this. Suffice to say this solution is probably going up late.

“Fragrant Harbour” is the direct translation of “Hong Kong”. The asian character means “oil” by the way (I didn’t know that - my wife, who can read Chinese, told me.). Which is quite fitting of course being that it looks like it is on top of two gigantic oil repositories and right next to what looks like a lake of the black stuff.

Anyhow, I gotta run, but our first real “international” clue went over fairly well, if a little on the easy side. I needed to make this one easy, because I can’t gauge yet how hard international stuff will be. Most people had not much trouble with it.

An interesting note. Mike Z DID get crunchy magic bonus points for finding some additional chinese characters:

5 - 10 minutes. Do I get any crazy bonus points for finding the smaller ones nearby? I actually found those first.

Shawn D notes:

It took me about twenty minutes. I’m going to love these international clues. It gives me a chance to learn a little more about some foreign countries.

I agree about the chance to find out more about the rest of the world. I am woefully under traveled so this will be interesting to find out more about other countries.

And Trecherus found another cool clue close by. Yeah, I noted that there seems to be a lot of interesting stuff to look at around the area:

I googled “Fragrant Harbour” and saw John Lanchester’s Fragrant Harbour that took place in Hong Kong. I then remember seeing something painted on the roof while searching Hong Kong for clues to send in. Unfortunately, that was a star. I thought the darkness on the left of the picture was water so I searched the western coasts. Although, the symbols turned out to be on the western coast, I don’t know what the darkness is.

Ok, kids. Tune in for another episode of scavengeroogling on Wednesday at 9!

Solution to “Asian Writing”

I underestimated how hard this word clue from Mike M might be, and I think I know why: It’s a California clue, so I’m familiar with the area… so I was scavenger hoodwinked into thinking that everyone knows about the Charles Schultz Museum! I figured it would be easy peasy. I’ve even physically visited the museum (took a detour through Sebastopol on honeymoon 6 years back), so I guess I wasn’t really thinking too much about mentally connecting” good grief” with the museum.

Still, some people did get it quick. Like Moose who wrote:

Very easy. Less than 3 mins. I like it when we’re not getting any calls at work, like today. Gives me more time for ‘Roogling.

Hooray for ‘roogling in the workplace! Judy B writes:

Good grief! This one was a thinker. Looked up Peanuts creater Charles Schultz and found the site immediately.

Good grief indeed. Peanuts is still one of my favorite cartoons. The holiday specials on TV still really get to me. Shawn D said:

Pretty easy, Googled Charles Schultz and the museum came up. Sonoma, Ca.

Love it. Gotta run.

I’d love to have a scavenge an hour, but failing that, I’m fine with the mailing list.

Steve M wrote:

First thing i thougth was Charlie Brown So i looked up the history of Charlie Brown and it brought me to Charles M . Schulz. It had someting there about a museum in Santa Rosa Cali. so I went straight there. Didn’t really even have to look it was right there. Have a good friday and weekend I’m getting off work early and taking my kids fishing . Later

Man, I am so jealous you are going fishing. I like fishing quite a bit… where do you go fishing in Oregon? I get seasick so it’s rivers and lakes only for me.

Jon G had a similar method:

Took me 15 min. Immediately thought of Charlie Brown, after a little while I thought of Charles Schultz. After some google searching I found out he lived near Santa Rosa in Sebastopol, CA. Only took a minute or so after pulling up Sebastopol on google maps.

Ann M notes:

found the Charles Schulz info on Wikipedia.

I have likewise found Wikipedia to be as useful (if not more useful at times) than straight plug and chug googling.

Ryan F said:

Didn’t get in until the region drop, and it I’m guessing it made a difference, unless googling “Charlie Brown” without “California” yielded some lucky first results. Took 5 minutes from search to find. Pretty cool on the edge of lower-res photo, too.

Thank God for region drops I guess. Jason C’s idea of old has been a good one. Luke P has a similar note:

About 5 minutes - I started after the region drop, which helped. “Good Grief” immediately made me think of the peanuts, and googling Peanuts and California brought up the Charles Schultz complex in Santa Rosa. Spent a few minutes scanning the area before I found it.

Ok, folks thanks for playing as always. So far, sounds like the mailing list and day long clue drop period idea is OK with most. If so, I will try get something together sometime after the July 4 weekend. Also, sorry, I have had to shelve the “real Scavenger” hunt for awhile, but believe me it is on the shelf and not in the trash… I’m hoping to really try that some time.

See you Monday at 9!

Solution to “Footprints in the Sand”

Hehe, I liked this clue just because it brings to attention the cruddy state of the NHL. I like hockey quite a bit, so this year has been a complete bummer… I don’t really follow any other sports. On the plus side, I’ve gotten to do more things now that I’m not watching so many games…

I know I said this one would be harder, but it wasn’t that tough. Trecherus gave us the clue of “Penguin Water” and I left it at that, mostly because these reservoirs(?) are so large. I thought it was interesting one looks completely empty and the other is full, so do they alternate usage or something?

Some people got it pretty quickly, and indeed I think once you linked Pittsburgh and Penguins the graphic clue was pretty easy to stumble upon.

Ken S wrote:

I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pa - 1 min

Judy B said:

Got it right off the bat. Had to think though.

and Tina said:

I’ve been on vacation for the past 2 weeks, my first one since I’ve been back. Took a few minutes to get the clue, but easy when I figured out city.

Andy K noted the hockey connection:

A little tougher since there was no hockey season this past year. Took a while to think of and come up with. But as long as you are an avid sports junkie you should come up with it. Nice and visible in the area.

Mike J almost got herringized:

Found it in about 5 minutes of looking. The clue made me think of the Hockey team so I scanned that area and found it.

Almost started in England because there is a Penguin Water Polo club in Hammersmith, but decided to try the Hockey club first.

Man, it is going to be more difficult to avoid incoming herringbombs now that we have the whole world at our fingertips to Scavengeroogle. I’m interested to see how the future international clues stand up. Josh W is also looking forward to an expanded search:

I really had no clue about the clue. I guessed Pittsburgh because of the Penguins and the color looked right. I followed the rivers looking for bridges and stumbled on it after a few minutes.

I am looking forward to seeing more interesting international images on perljam’s site…it’s interesting how close up you can get in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Not as many solutions today… Hey I am mulling over an idea for the clue release schedule. I’ve tried to keep it regular so that everyone knows when to come to the site and I have a status bar at the top to say when the next clue is coming. But as I said it’s increasingly difficult to keep to the schedule for me. It would be better if I could just post up a clue whenever I had the time.

So, I was wondering if maybe I should startup an informal “clue release” mailing list. This way, I could just notify everyone whenever a clue is launched. Also, this might make it so I don’t have to “tend the fire” as it were; right now, I kind of have to keep an eye on solutions coming in during the “open clue” time period, and I have to hurry to get the solution page ready at the bell. If I did a mailing list, I understand that not everyone would be able to jump on the clue right away, and in fact might not even read there email till later in the day. To compensate for that, I’d make it so the clue would have an open window of maybe a day or so. We’d get more solutions too perhaps.

I know some people like the short “set timelength” because it makes it a bit more fun to have to solve the clue in the required time. But a longer window of play-time would make it more flexible for east-coasters, and make it less rushed for me too.

I personally am not a big fan of mailing lists because I sign up for them and then they start to get annoying. But if I did a mailing list, it would only be for clue launches. I guess people can always signup for the RSS feed through Bloglines, but I think everyone’s still pretty used to email…

All right, I’ll write more about the mailing list idea in another post. See you Friday at 9…

Solution to “Double P”

So Tony A had originally emailed me a long time ago about putting Bermuda on the Scavengeroogle map. I’d forgotten about it, but while culling my email I found his message about it. He originally had suggested one of the large ships around the island as the clue, but he said maybe I could search for something else on the island to choose. It’s interesting that Bermuda has hi-res imagery. I thought it might have been funny if Google had drawn a big gigantic triangle into the satellite map to indicate the Bermuda triangle.

Also, before it was not immediately apparent where Bermuda was… now they at least have the island name. Before last Friday, there was no island name, and there was no picture of the island in street map mode. So it really did seem as if something weird was going on in the Bermuda Triangle!

Quite a few people thought this was easy. Tony’s original clue was going to be something about “triangle” and “shorts”. I just put onions in there because I thought it was less apparent than shorts. Some responses:

Judy B:

Took me longer to find Bermuda (embarassingly so) than to find the clue!

As I said, this was definitely an issue. When I tried to do a “re-find” starting from scratch, I had a hard time picking out Bermuda right away. Shawn D is thinking ecologically when he says:

Too easy, But still fun. I wonder what this is. Surely they’re not strip mining on a beautiful island like Bermuda.

I was wondering about that bare patch as well, hopefully that’s not the result of some sort of mining!

Brian G used an extra hint I gave:

Couple minutes today. Kinda worked through the ’someplace different’ and triangle clue until I found it. Pretty cool high-res imagery there.

I DID think about what I said about it being “someplace different” and also the fact that it would be difficult to drop a region clue. I thought that might help a little more with nailing the clue down. Jon G was one of the few that actually looked somewhere else other than Bermuda to start:

Took 10 min. Didn’t really know what onion meant so I focused on triangle. Only things I could come up with were Triangle, VA and the Bermuda Triangle. A quick check of Bermuda and there it was. I was kinda surprised that Bermuda was so hi-res.

Ryan F was one of the other few who had a bit of herring for breakfast:

This one took about 5 minutes. At first I started searching for cities with the word “Delta” in them - the triangle part of the clue herringed me there. Finally, I just googled onion + triangle, and for some reason one of the very first entries talked about the Bermuda Triangle. Knowing Bermuda was a type of onion, I knew I was getting warm.

I was actually wondering if anyone would try and do something with They Might Be Giants (Triangle Man), hehe. I did see a google entry for Bermuda under “onion triangle”, which is why I reversed it to “triangle onions”..

Some newcomers to getting a ‘roogle solution:

Alex P:

Triangle triggered me to think Bermuda triangle right away. I did a search for Bermuda Onions and found a plethora of matches, so that further validated that it must be in Bermuda. It’s hard to find Bermuda on Google Maps though…I had to figure out its vicinity by looking at another map (expedia)…then because there are no street maps for Bermuda, it took a minute or two to actually find the island. Once I found the island, I just went around the whole northern coastline until I found it. It took about 10 minutes all together. This is my first scavengeroogle…thanks! It’s fun!

and Luke P:

First one that I’ve gotten - probably about 30 minutes. I was convinced I had it when I found Cape Onion in Newfoundland, but there was no hi-res imaging. When I got the Bermuda/Onion connection, I went to Bermuda, and it only took about 2 minutes scanning the island from there.

That’s funny about Cape Onion. I could see how that herring might throw you off…

OK, most likely we will have another clue coming up on Wednesday at 9… I’ll try to make the next one a bit harder perhaps to compensate for this easier one!

Solution to “Jo and Face”

I had reservations about putting up this clue as I was writing it down. For one, it didn’t really look like a dragonfly… as Steve M said it sort of looked like a string of firecrackers. And I didn’t have a clue as to the word clue. Anything leading straight to Des Moines would have been too easy, I thought. So I decided to try to go to a different language and say “French Monk” which I thought would lead everyone to Des Moines. On Wikipedia it says: “from French Rivière des Moines, i.e. ‘River of the Monks’ “.

This wasn’t enough though, because a lot of people looked for actual French monks. I anticipated that as herrings sort of, but didn’t know it would be that bad. In addition, there is some controversy as to if that is the actual origin of the city’s name; I think some people have connected it to Indian tribes around area, and in fact one funny explanation says it means “excrement faces” in an old Indian dialect. Supposedly, anyway.

Ok, so anyhow a few people still got the clue.

Mark L wrote:

Found it by a fluke…… needle in a haystack approch…… 5 seconds

and Judy B said:

Took about 5-10 minutes and a huge bit of luck! (:

Nothing like a little Friday luck! Moose says:

I never really understood the word clue. I just waited for the location drop, and noticed that there weren’t many high-res images for iowa. Took me about 30 mins search time between calls at work.

I DID bank on the fact that the hi-res squares weren’t that numerous in Iowa. Can you imagine, though, what’s going to happen when google starts to fill in those missing areas of hi-res? It may get a lot tougher.

Jeremy R got it, though it was a big timesuck:

That was ridiculous…I was all over the map, from Canada to Texas to Minnesota, and even a brief stop in a completely different part of Iowa. Even after the region drop I had trouble because I was convinced it had to be near the river (French monk “runs”). So much for being productive today!

Katie N did try to find an actual French Monk:

This was a hard clue. I originally thought the french monk had something to do with Dom Perignon (since he was a french monk), so I kept looking around Champagne, IL. With the Iowa clue, I immediately searched around Des Moines, and it only took a few minutes to find.

Steve M said:

I came in a little late on this one but it took me 1min after the clue drop. I vote to keep the Scavengeroogle alive i look forward to every clue. Still not Bored of it. Keep it alive

I shall most certainly try to keep up the clues. And Jon G said:

Took about 10 min. but I joined after 2 clues, so that made it easier. Have a good weekend!

My sentiments exactly… have a good weekend and I will see you on Monday at 9!

Solution to “Dragonfly”

I didn’t get a chance to write up a full solution, so I’ll just list some of the responses below. Most people seemed to get the U2 reference. I’ve driven to Joshua Tree Park fairly recently (2 years ago) and would highly recommend it to anyone interested. Also, nice to see people playing at work… =)

Phil M:

This area has a lot of interesting designs for neighborhoods. Actually, while serching for this clue, I found the solutions to another clue (The bug one). Not too difficult, Where the Streets Have no Name is a song from the U2 album Joshua Tree. figured I’d look around Joshua Tree National Park.

Andy K:

Not too bad at all as long as you know a little U2.

I think you should definately at least keep up the scavengeroogle going 2 or 3 times a week if at all possible. It’s a great time.

Larry B:

Got it. Clue was actually very easy. Just think album title…

Katie N:

This one took me about 10 minutes. I finally decided to see if there was a city called joshua tree, and apparently there is!

Moose:

Good clue, pretty easy though. I just googled the clue verbatim and found a bunch of stuff about Joshua Tree. I then noticed the national park in California, so I looked around there. I would have found it faster, but I kept looking southwest of Joshua Tree Nat. Park instead of north. Took about 10 minutes of actual hunting time…I kept getting calls here at work so I guess my solution time would be 20 minutes with all my interruptions.

Scotty B:

I was kicking myself for not thinking of Joshua Tree Nat’l Park, but the fact that I live near No Name Key, FL had me thinking that there were probably other places like that in our great country as well.

Thankfully, my buddy just told me about a trip he took to Joshua Tree, or else I would probably still be trying to input a town called No Name, Arizona.

Jim:

Where the Streets have no Name is from U2’s Joshua Tree album. Found the address for Joshua tree, then a couple minutes of searching around before I found it.

Back to work, I guess.

Jared R:

I think I sent this in but not sure. Busy day and I am confusing myself. Gotta love the scavengeroogle distraction from real work.

Judy B:

Just a couple of minutes. I knew the music reference and am very familiar with the actual location. I put the town name in and saw DaBomb after a couple of additional clicks.

Jim M:

Got the Joshua Tree reference, but thought it might be Vegas where the U2’s video to the song was filmed … tooled around the outskirts there then cruised over to 29Palms, went one a brief sojourn south to Palm Springs, before hitting the target in Yucca Valley. About 10-12 minutes scan time.

Thanks everyone for playing… see you Friday at 9!

Solution to “DaBomb”

A little shortage of players, probably because I had to close the game early today… sorry about that. Still a good number of solutions came rolling in today. I’m sort of getting used to just giving out word clues based on what people say. I mean, I try check them a bit usually but it really saves time when people submit word clues along with the graphic clue.

Oh, on that note… if you submit a clue please tell me exactly what it is you are submitting if it is not obvious. I have had people send in tantalizing word clues and a cool title for the clue, but when I click on the googlemap link, I’m not able to tell what it is I’m looking for! Also, make sure to grab the link correctly and “test” your link first in a browser to see what you’re sending me. Googlemaps are a bit funny that way… Thank you for sending in clues though!

So to the scavenger solutions. Golux13 solved as follows:

My first search for “GC” turned up a bunch of Government of Canada sites, so I looked at one and searched on “Hollow Spring.” Turns out there’s a Hollow Water Indian reservation in Manitoba, and there’s even some hi-res imaging in the area… but not what I was looking for. Then I looked at the clue pic again and saw the golf hole and thought “GC = Golf Club!” A quick Google search on “golf club hollow spring” turned up Spring Hollow GC in Spring City, PA. From there, it was mere moments.

Yeah there were a few herrings along the way… That’s cool I actually purposely shifted the IP address pic a bit in the screengrab in order to include part of the golf hole… I just wanted to see if that would be an extra hint and sure enough it was! Other people found it similarly, like Mike J:

Took me around 30 mins. Started looking aroud Grand Canyon (there is a Spring Hollow hiking area in Zion Natl Park). Couldn’t find it there, and looked closely and looked like part of a golf course at bottom right. Googled that and lead right to answer.

I’ve been to Zion when I was a kid but missed going there on the latest Colorado trip a few years back. Though I did get to Bryce which was pretty amazing…

Ryan F didn’t use the green but would’ve:

Took about 2 minutes. Thank god I knew what “GC” usually stands for. Although the green and sand trap in the corner might have helped once I actually saw it. I usually don’t study the picture itself as much as I probably should.

Shawn D also used the golf green hint and is yet another person playing at work:

Man, I’m hot this week. Took all of 2 minutes. I saw what looked like a golf green in the picture Did a search for Holow Spring Golf Course and bam! there it was.

Damn, now I gotta work. Great fun

Hehe. You said “Bam”, like Emeril. Andy K was also scavengeroogling under the boss’s nose:

woohoo…. a golfer here hard at work

Ken S. has family near the IP:

This one is half a mile from my in-laws’ house.

Mike M. crossed over to the “other” search engine, using Yahoo:

20 min, google searches didn’t work, one yahoo search did the trick…..

Jarret R. got the OC, er, excuse me… the GC! I keep typing OC…

Took about 10 minutes. . . didn’t put GC together with Golf Club right away.

So anyhow, I’ve gotta take off. But anyhow, I think I may have to miss putting out a clue this coming Monday. I am not 100% sure… I know, you’re thinking what is with all the breaks! Sorry ’bout that, but I think I’m going to be out…

So unless you see otherwise in the status bar, I will see you all Wednesday at 9. Happy weekend!

Solution to “IP Address”

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”

We had a slow start todaybut it picked up toward the end. Graduations, summer breaks, work etc. interferring probably? So, anyhow the “hope” was of course Bob Hope and “springs” pointed to Palm Springs. I live fairly close to Palm Springs but have never made the trek there for some reason or another. Although I think I may have passed through there when I was a kid. I’m sort of curious about it, because the stereotypical view of it is as the blue-haired golfer’s paradise or something. Although amazingly, the Coupland book GenerationX was set there…

Shawn D got it fast and sent in a guess as to what the “bug” in our hunt today actually is:

A record for me. About 7 seconds. But I’ve played golf in Palm Springs before. Everything is Bob Hope or Dinah Shore there. Almost went to Hope Arkansas first but I thought I’d try Palm Springs. Didn’t even need the Geo clue. Darn, now I’ve gotta work the rest of the day.

BTW, I’m pretty sure this is the Palm Springs Riviera Resort and Racquet Club. Where the Rat Pack and Elvis used to stay and play.

Others were similarly fast. Mark G:

I got real lucky again. By the time I checked, I saw the Southern California clue. Immediately I checked a map of Palm Springs, CA, zoomed to 11/15, and switched to satellite. And there it was. 9.79 seconds flat. Same as Ben Johnson. Minus the steroids.

Mark L:

Less than a minute after bringing up the map….. (Palm) Springs

Mike J:

Google’d the clue, saw the comedian, then went to his Spring City and looked around. Surprised me when I saw it so quick.

Some were familiar with the area. Craig S said:

Found this one quickly. I have family that lives near there.

and Jarret R wrote:

Time to solve - less than 1 minute. . . been to Palm Springs a few times, pretty easy to solve.

Mike Z went to Arkansas first, something I must admit I didn’t check into before posting the clue:

This one took all of 1 minute and 30 seconds. I got the clue almost immediately but the first thing that came to mind was Hope, Arkansas and Hot Springs, Arkansas. After a few seconds I thought of Bob Hope and realized the clue was about Palm Springs instead.

Golux13 also tried Hope, Arkansas first before getting it:

Time: About 1 minute after I saw the region clue. Went instantly to Palm Springs. But I have no idea how I was supposed to get to Palm Springs from the clue “Hope’s Springs Eternal.” My first thought was Hope, Arkansas, but there are no high-resolution images in the entire area, so I would have been lost without the region clue drop.

Katie N similarly didn’t need the “hope” part of the clue to get the solution anyway:

It took me about 5 minutes. I got to this one late, so I already had the Southern California clue. I don’t really understand what the clue means, but I happened to check Palm Springs and lucked out.

Brian G noticed something I saw right away to, there is a thin vertical line of lo-res imagery right through Palm Springs. I’ve often seen things like this and wonder why that happens - is it just a stitching problem?

Nice clue! There was that annoying strip of low-res satellite in the middle of Palm Springs, that threw me off for a little bit. Lots of golf courses there! About 20 mins.

And that’s all she wrote. A quick note: East Coasters who want to submit some clues are extremely welcome. For some reason I either seem to be choosing West Coast clues or the majority of clues coming in are also West Coast. I think it is mainly because if there are no word clues that come in with the picture clue, then I have to make up the word clue. And I’m more likely to be able to make up a good word clue for an area I’m familiar with, and since I’ve only been to the western states…

It is starting to get blastingly hot here again, I may have to cave in and turn on the A.C. soon. See you all Wednesday at 9…

Solution to “Bug Hunt”

Whew that was sort of tough. Anyhow, I believe that the CTC stands for “Combat Training Centre” which is near the CFB (Canadian Forces Base) in Gagetown, Canada. I think this might be some sort of field training area. When I first looked it up, I thought it could be either the “Canada Tourism Commission”, “Canadian Labour Congress”, “Computer Training and Consulting” or “Canada Tibet Committee”. Talk about your herrings, geez!

I believe this is our first clue in Canada. Jon G points out a problem that I was having when I was trying to do refinds:

A few google searches led me to C.F.B. Gagetown, wasn’t too hard after that, just a little looking around. Hardest part was getting google maps to find stuff in Canada.

Godamn, yes I had that same problem. For some reason googlemaps doesn’t like to pick up anything in Canada. You have to actually go and look for the places manually. It kept thinking New Brunswick was in New Jersey no matter how close I zoomed in on Canada. It was also a bit difficult because of the low contrast. Jason C:

Took about 15 mins, I was sure I would miss it considering that I couldnt see hardly anything on the screen with the dark colors in the photos.

Mike Z found it by process of elimination on the googlemap squares once Brunswick was dropped. This is usually a good idea, especially if you think the clue is in a rural region where google maps may not have as “squares” of high detail mapped.

Because there wasn’t much land area mapped at high detail, I just searched New Brunswick until I found it. Easy. Of course, I had the benefit of seeing the region clue when I started.

Quite a few people were misdirected in the beginning. I am quite the dunce regarding all things military, which is why this one was so tough to come up with a clue for. But I thought that giving the man after which the town was named might do the trick. Indeed, Ryan F said:

My first successful find! Took only 2 minutes or so, after Googling “Thomas Gage Canada”

Michael J came to the solution in a bit of a roundabout:

Not bad. I enjoyed reading about the history of Gage. He was born in Sussex, England, so I started searching in near Sussex, New Brunswick. Not far from there is Gagetown.

Katie N went to Montreal first which actually I had a feeling that people might try, having seen that connection too.

This took me a while. I looked in Montreal for a long time because I found something about Gage being the governor. With the New Brunswick clue, a google search led me right to Gagetown.

Daniel M: did the same for a bit:

Took me about ten minutes. Gage had been governor of Montreal for three years of his life, so I spent about five minutes there. I hate to say that it took the clue drop for me to finally get it. But it still only took me ten minutes…clue drop just happened to occur while I was looking.

Jim M did the Montreal thing and in addition went to Hamilton…

Was looking in and around Hamilton (there’s a Gage Park there) and Montreal (where Col. Gage was governor at one time). Spent 15 min. then gave up and waited for the drop - about 2 min. after the drop.

Brian G also went astray but got it anyhow:

Was in Nova Scotia for a long time. Finally checked New Bruns. after the region clue. About 25 mins. today. Not sure what CTC stands for. Gagetown - clever…

and Josh W was in the States for awhile before getting it:

Gagetown, New Brunswick. Took me a while of looking in West Virginia for the Battle of Monogahela…I realized it was in Canada.

Hope you all have a good weekend, I certainly need this one. See you Monday morning, bright and early.

Solution to “See Tea Sea”

I’ve actually been to Moab before, on the way back from my Colorado trip awhile back. It was blastingly hot because it was the peak summer season, but a pretty nice place. We drove into Arches National Park and had a good time there. Got to the famous Delicate Arch but it was just too plain hot to walk up to it. (This is the arch that most photographers want to take a pic of)

Anyhow, so my word clue creation skills have been lacking lately! The Kangaroo Rat in question is actually the “tailings pond” for an old uranium mine near Moab. I thought that “U Mill” might be tough enough but several people noted they just used google. Adam M:

Just did a google search for U Mill, and it led me to Moab, Utah

Phil M said:

WOOT!

I figured it would be a Uranium Mill from both the picture and the clue. Searched google for any popular Uranium mills and Moab, Utah was my first guess. I think this took me about 2 mins.

I think the colors are from all the sediment that collects in the retaining ponds.

Damn, I thought I checked for “U Mill” on google and it didn’t go directly to the solution. I was going to say “Uranium Mill” but that was too obvious. I was also going to do something with “isotope” but thought that might be stretching it.

Jon G:

A few google searches led me to uranium mill websites, and after looking around Moab where the atlas uranium mill tailings are, I spotted our friend the flying kangaroo rat.

The speedsters were certainly out in force today. Jason said:

Found in 10 secs, just looking at this place on Google Maps last week.

and Shawn D:

Real easy, about 2 minutes. Still great stuff, tho. Keep up the good work.

and Mark G:

As I was eating my late morning nachos, I realized I forgot to check today’s Scavengeroogle. By the time I checked, I saw the “Utah” clue. Only since I had once been there did I check Arches National Park first. And voila. 37 seconds flat. It’s the luck of the nacho, I tell ya.

Chris R noted the ambiguity of the “U” which was originally meant to stand for uranium:

Is it U for “Utah” or U for “Uranium”??!!

U is for “Unknown”, hehehe. On the other hand, Katie N thought of uranium right away:

This only took me about 3 minutes. I’m a complete nerd, so I was immediately thinking about uranium. Only took a minute to find Moab, Utah.

I think I almost failed College Chemistry, LOL. Jared R did process of elimination (Jared by the way I did catch yr solution for Friday but I forgot to put it up till now, sorry bout that. Also, I was confused by the fact that there is also a “Jarret R” playing the game… there are also two different Chris R’s. Hmm - I don’t use last names for privacy’s sake, but I may need to distinguish y’all somehow or another! ):

Easy to find but I joined after the clue drop so was able to narrow down the six uranium mines in the US to the one in Utah.

The other Chris R also used process of elimination:

Googled Uranium milling in Utah and came up with a list of all U Mill sites in the state. After that I just went down the list until I got to the Moab mill. All in all it took about 15 minutes.

I had a feeling that color matching would help a bit… the rocks are a really vibrant brick red that I don’t believe occurs in too many places (though I know there is a place in California that is really red like that). Tina wrote:

I had no idea what the clue meant, but I started in Utah, color matched, and it was right there.

and Jarret R said:

I knew it had to be somewhere with red rocks from the color, so when I plugged in uranium mill, I scanned for either Utah, NM or AZ. . . once I saw Moab, UT, I could see the color resemblence. . . took about 5 minutes total.

Justin didn’t let obstacles come between him and Scavengeroogling:

I got my wisdom teeth removed today, so finding this clue is definitely the high point of my day so far. It took only a few minutes

When I got my wisdom teeth pulled, they knocked me out first. And then the bastards woke me up too early so, as my brother later told me, I was high as a friggin kite on the way home.

I had been thinking of coming up with an area of the site that is a repository for unused clues, and Steve M just suggested the same thing along with his solution:

I think google helped out on the clue a little to much , it took me to the Uranium mills in Utah in which i did color matching it took me ten minutes. P.S you should start a google art page for all the cool stuff people have been sending that you dont have enough room to make clues for, just an idea.

At first I was thinking that there are too many other sites documenting googlemap places like this, but I guess it would be different because we are in general not documenting famous places per se… but it WOULD entail more work on my end, so I’d have to think about that. =)

I am still considering the “Scavengeroogle Hunt”… I’ll mention some ideas in another post, but one of the things I really wanted to come up with is PRIZES. I am trying to think of things that are cheap but that ppl would like (I can’t really afford to give away the cash prizes like other sites right now). I would try fish for real sponsors but not sure if they would bite. Maybe I will visit the local Dollar Tree to see if they have anything fun…

See you Friday at 9!

Solution to “Flying Kangaroo Rat”

Not as many players today, I suspect everyone’s going out of town or gearing up for a fun weekend. Like me (hopefully!) I had to shut off the game early today to go somewhere, but anyhow, here are some of the comments:

Jeremy R:

Wow…that’s the fastest I’ve ever found one. I guess you were feeling sorry for everyone after posting my difficult clue yesterday. First time I’ve actually gotten to look while a clue is still active in quite a while, glad I found it soon.

Yeah, I guess I did make it a little easier on purpose. I don’t know why I always feel guilty about having a clue turn out hard, since most of the time it is beyond my control. But I do! Seriously, I don’t intend to waste your time… hehe. There is no way to control it, but I try to at least alternate: if the previous clue was easy, I’d try to make the next one harder and vicey versey.

Katie N

It took me about 5 minutes. There were only a few places along the border between the Dakotas that had decent satellite maps, so I checked those spots and found it.

Jon G:

I looked around South Dakota-North Dakota border for an area with high resolution and after looking at a few of these areas I spotted it.

Steve M:

The clue took meet straight to the border of South and North Dakota after that I did a little bit of color matching , it took me about 10min . Everyone have a lovely Extended weekend .

Yep I sort of intended that there would be only a few places to look and that people would use colormatch. I made sure to check that there wouldn’t be that many in the area.

Jarret R:

Took about 5 minutes. . . just cruised the North/South Dakota border looking for the right color scheme. . . unfortunately, I started at the western border and made my way east.

Phil M:

I’ve got to admit, this one was tough. Even though the clue was simple, finding the solution took a lot of panning. I think my biggest mistake was starting my search on the west ends of SD and ND. In all it took me about 20 mins.

LOL, I had a feeling that if you came from the west it would take longer. Ok, well I’ve got to run, see you all Wednesday at 9!

Solution to “Anteater Head”