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

Hey, sorry for making everyone look through so many rivers! Many of you actually did that. Yeah I KNEW it would be red herringitis, but otherwise it would’ve been too easy. Brian G notes:

About 20-30 minutes, off and on. Once I realized there was a Lake St. Louis, I stopped looking in the river…

After getting a lot of similar mail, I decided to drop the water clue. That set many straight who were dredging the river. Jason C:

got it right away after the first clue…

But, I didn’t check the connection regarding different “kings”. I should’ve paid more attention in history classes! Robert M started with a different french king:

Took me a little while, but not too long. I was thinking Lake Charles, LA for awhile though.

… as did Rian B:

Had me going at Lake Charles, Louisiana. It had a legend about some pirate burying treasure there. Finally switched to a different french king and found it by st louis.

Oops. To add to the ambiguity, there is also the Missouri (Misery) River, which some like Scott L searched through:

This one wasn’t too hard, though I spent too much time looking up and down the MIssouri River. Anywho, I had a couple of classes interrupting my solving time, I’d say I spent about fifty minutes on this one.

Others had no problems after the clue drop. From Justin:

This took me about thirty seconds. My first instinct was that “Misery” probably referred to Missouri and that the Holy French King probably referred to St. Louis, and since your second clue said it wasn’t a river, I figured it was a lake. So I typed in “Lake St. Louis, MO” into Google Maps, and then found it pretty quickly.

By the way, did anyone else see Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy yet? I’m a big fan of the books but, I must admit that during the “satellite view” shots of earth and other planets, all I could think about was “Hey, that would make a good Scavengeroogle clue.” I think I’ve been spending too much time on this site!

Got some work to finish up the rest of today, so I’m going to return tomorrow morning with another clue. Around 9 a.m. PDT., same bat channel…

Solution to “No Sunken Treasure”

Wow. This was by far the hardest one yet. I think it even beat “Minnesota Pie”.

I dug my own grave with this one, by trying to be too cute with the word clues. The lesson here is, don’t try to come up with word clues 15 minutes before launching a clue! I am a dingle-bat, so it takes me about 1/2 hour to think up a suitable word clue. Then I usually spend about a half hour crossreferencing things in both google and google maps to make sure it’s not TOO easy.

I should’ve come up with a cool that was a pun on the town name, Fall River, instead. Sorry Ben…

Ok, so let’s look at the damage. The solvers were so few and far between, I can actually go through each of them here:

John F. was the only one who found this after only the 2:56 clue drop. Props to him. He says:

84 minutes

I believe Tony A. and Scott L. got this soon after the 3:29 clue drop. Tony said it took him an hour. Scott notes:

I’ve been working for a couple of hours now, that was a bitch. And there are way too many St. Patrick Cemeteries in the world. Confusingly and confoundingly, there is also a st. Patrick’s Episcopal church in Somerset Maryland. What a pain, but how much fun to have solved!

A couple hours! I totally didn’t check into the different Somersets enough. I knew there was a Somerset in MD, but not about St. Patrick’s church. Belatedly, I realized that St. Patrick’s is just too common of a clue.

Veteran Jason C. found it around 4 o’clock. He says:

Found it easy when I looked in the right town (and state)

Angie S. and Ian T. got the answer around when the 4:17 clue was dropped. Tina found it around 5:00. She notes:

(Finally) Just couldn’t find the city…

Max sneaked in with a solution around 5:50. And that’s all there is!

By the way, Nathan L., who didn’t solve the clue but wrote in to say he’s been enjoying the site, says:

… dont’ worry about how easy or hard the clues are, just post them.

Um, yes but you didn’t get an email saying that someone wanted to “kick your ass”… granted a friendly kick in the ass. But still an asskick is an asskick.

Speaking of a kick in the ass, this one certainly was one for me to make better word clues. I’m going to try get some clues bright and early Monday morning (for me at least), so check back then round 9 a.m. PDT. Thank you all for playing!

Solution to “Say Hi To Your Mom”

Ravenous Scavengeroogles! Every one of you. We got a lot of differing opinions on how hard this clue really was.

On that note, I’ve really come to realize that the so-called “Difficulty” rating is really nothing more than a subjective guess on my part. It goes like this: people who are playing for the first time and “get lucky” or happen to live in the area will think the clue is too easy. On the other hand, veteran Scavengeroogles who are actually really good at this may get unlucky and start looking in exactly the wrong place, and then become frustrated that I gave the clue such an “easy” Difficulty. Ugh.

As such I’m going to drop the “Difficulty” rating as it don’t do us any favors! But I’ll certainly state in the clue whether I THINK it’s hard or not. =)

Anyhow, the word clue was too easy I agree… it don’t take a genius to google that. Greg J said:

You had me going, but trusty ole’ regular Google search got me straightened out.
Thanks! Love the site!

But lots of people already knew the clue had to do with Weezer. I still love that Blue album and play it every so often. From Ian T:

Woo-ee-oo, I look just like Buddy Holly.
Oh-Oh, and you’re Mary Tyler Moore.

Yeah! Fonz! “I don’t care what they say about us anyway. I dont care about that!” Eric W chimes in:

I knew that the clue featured lyrics from Weezer’s Buddy Holly so, as any good Texan would know, I immediately checked out Lubbock. I noticed in the photo on with the clue that there was an amphitheater so I Googled for Lubbock amphitheaters!

Once again, a lot of you are playing at work (or putting off your finals). From Leroy T:

It took me about 30 minutes. This is fun. I bet I could do it quicker without these stupid interuptions at work. :0)

Simple solution to that really. Clue your boss into the site, and then you can all Scavengeroogle together…

Solution to “Texas Pride”

There’s the bell. Whew! I sort of like the “race” idea where there’s a deadline, so I think we may stick with some sort of time deadline for awhile.

All that work for just a little wisp next to a road. I sort of liked this one still, because it looked like many things. Ghost, fire, fog, smoke, google defect, take your pick!

It’s located in Custer State Park, which I hadn’t heard of, in South Dakota. It took quite a bit of searching for many… the average time needed for the early solvers was more than an hour. But they did it without the “Hwy 16″ clue which is pretty amazing. Charlie E. wrote:

Custer’s ghost has a pretty big park to roam around in…

Yeah… after the slow start to this one, I thought I’d better drop the second clue fast. Things picked up after that. Though the clue overall was harder than some earlier ones, some people evidently enjoyed the time wasted. Kyle M. said:

… 15 minutes during finals week. great time waster, lots of fun.

As to what this thing actually is, opinions varied though most, like Shawn D., found humor in it:

toughie! I like the ghost explanation. Maybe one of the presidents on Mt.
Rushmore blowing smoke rings?

But I still like my Secret Government Base In The Woods hypothesis best…

Solution to “Not The RED Button!”

Egads, you are all faaaaast. A good number of solutions, even though I thought this one was tough. Not everyone needed to use the word clue, which was “C and Cake” = “Sea and Cake” which is an indie band from… Chicago. I was trying to somehow work in Elliott Smith’s “A Question Mark” into the clue but it just didn’t fit.

So, Chicago peeps, what is this thing anyhow… obviously some sort of pier of sorts. I had thought I’d seen this featured on the Travel Channel, but it might have been a differrent structure.

Oh, remember not to put the solution to clue in the “Comments” section. And that’s actually the reason I have the comments on “Moderation” because a person who is new to the site may inadvertently post the solution. Use the Solve A Clue Form instead.

Also, please remember to use the “Link To This Page” thingy in Google Maps to copy the location of your clue solution. DON’T grab the URL from the location bar of your browser as this will not give the correct location. You need to use the “Link To This Page”…

Solution to “Question Mark”

Whew! I think I underestimated how recognizable “Go Ducks” would be (well, that was the exact clue I got from Wes). I don’t know much about sports so… hehe. But I liked this teacup shape, it was cool. How easy? Brian R. writes:

5 minutes or so. Once I found out the U of Oregon was in
Eugene it wasn’t too hard

and Jason C. writes:

Actually an easy one to find given I’m from Arizona and knew immediately what Go Ducks meant. Also I live near fields and recognized the RR tracks next to it and from that found it very quickly.

So when do YOU Scavengeroogle? I thought this was funny… Shawn D. says:

Too easy. But still lots of fun. I got this one in ten minutes. While on the
phone with clients.

Dude, yeah. Multitasking is where it’s at.

Anyhow, you may be wondering why I listed the first TEN solutions instead of the the first five. Well, I got so many solutions in such a short window of time, that I some were most certainly ties. So I decided to put up more names for this one. We’ll have to see in the future if this many responses come in… I may have to permanently list 10 names instead of 5!

Looks like we got some new blood too… my logs show a lot of people coming from the College Humor site which I haven’t seen before. Welcome, welcome new Scavengeroogles!

Solution to “I’m A Little Teacup”

What was cool was that I didn’t even notice before about the building to the right of the Sad Texan. Jen wrote:

“… and he’s so sad there’s a tear coming out of his eye.”

Hehe, kind of funny. Well, I guess I was trying to get a little too cute with the word clues. “White House” which is “Casa Blanca” in Spanish, which is a lake in Texas, which is close to Laredo where the Sad Texan lives. After all “White House” has too many connotations… but I didn’t want people to just type in “Casa Blanca Texas” because I believe that takes you too close to the answer. But some people didn’t even need the clue. Jason C. says:

… I don’t get what the clue “white House” has to do with it but I looked around the metro areas(dallas, austin, houston, san antonio) before thinking where would alot of people wait in line to go through when it occurred to me it might be a border crossing station, and wham I found it at the first place I checked after that which just happened to be Laredo.

About what the sad face is, Colin P. writes:

An unhappy border crossing.

And that pretty much looks like what it is… border crossing station buildings between the U.S and Mexico. I guess they shaped it like a sad face to discourage illegal crossings? The right side lane is completely clogged but the left is open…

Solution to “Sad Texan”

Well, here’s that elusive solution to Minnesota Pi. We only got 4 correct solutions this time, and it took two days and an extra clue. So yeah, look around Duluth which is Low’s homebase and you should find it. I think it is water or some sort of pond that just happened to be shaped like Pi.

Solution to “Minnesotan Pie”

You are all insanely fast Scavengeroogles. That is all I have to say. The spark was not the hardest clue, though I bet it would have been really tough if I didn’t give out the name of the city. Regarding, what the “spark” is … I dunno the nature of it. Jason notes:

I found 2 others of these sunlight glints in the area before I found the one you had
posted.

Funny, yeah I noticed that too while surfing around the area. It seems like some sort of glare spot, though I wonder how that happens. I have also seen many google map blurps that really do look like defects and not glare, but they are often visible on the maps pretty high up, like 11/15 or something.

Solution to “Giant Spark”

Aw.. well I guess E did stand for “easy”. Tons of correct solutions, many in 2-5 minutes. The usual suspects were first however. I have been thinking of doing a “leaderboard” but damn that would be work to keep track of since I don’t have the solvers names in a database right now, and I dont even want to think about doing it by hand.

Solution to “Brought To You By The Letter E”

I would just like to say that you are all, like, googlemap geniuses! Thinking back on it, this was a really tough clue, I certainly underestimated the difficulty. As to what it is, everyone seems to think it’s some sort of target for military practice which is what I had imagined it possibly could be. The area is called “Dugway Proving Grounds”… what a big target though. How can anyone fail to hit that? Haha.

Jason C. says:

Even though I knew it was in Utah given the clue, it still toook me a while to find it but then I started thinking it might be a target for the military so I started looking closer in the military lands and found it. So my best guess is that it is a target and it is so close to Dugway, Ut it seems plausible.

And Shawn D. writes:

I looked around the salt lake for an hour till I saw your second clue. Then I found it pretty quick. It’s part of the Dugway proving grounds. Probably a target? See:

http://www.kued.org/skullvalley/road/

Solution to “Moroni’s Halo”

I’ve only been river rafting once, as a kid. And it was quite a dicey affair, getting dunked in the water various times. I think I’ll confine myself to virtual river rafting via google. =)

Anyhow, quite a few of you found this clue. I’m wondering what this really is and it hasn’t been answered really. Jason C. writes:

This has something to do with the colorado river water coming into denver but it was
so long ago that i read about it that i can’t remember the details of all the
structures and stuff used to get it to denver.

I kind of thought something along that lines given the location. Some sort of water transportation thing via aqueducts getting it ready to be shipped out toward L.A.? I don’t believe it’s a dam though and a few readers agreed with this. If you know what this is please comment!

Solution to “Let’s Go Rafting”