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U of Chicago Scavenger Hunt List - 2004
nightsweat writes "The list of items and tasks for the 2004 version of the infamous University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt (or scavhunt for short) is up as a PDF. As a veteran of the first hunt in 1985, I'm glad to see the youngsters carrying on the madness. Some of the highlight items - the URLs of the blogs of the judges, five pages of Queer Eye for Doctor Doom, A McDonald's Sad Meal, Mrs Potatohead giving Mr. Potato head, Eudaemonia (300 points!), and a permanent tattoo that says 'Sorry about the syphilis, can we still be cousins?'"
You know, like, I read through the list and everything ... but I think I'll have more fun, just, well, getting stoned.
Happiness
A PDF viewer for Windows that doesn't suck up more resources Doom III. Good luck on that!
If Mrs Potato wants to give me head.
cheers
Some of the kids successfully built a working breeder reactor...
the last time the reactor was seen, it was in the back of one of the "idiot twins" cars. The idiot twins were genius physics students, one of which went on to work at los alamos...
makes you think.
~dijjnn
I have that tattoo already!
In France this type of hunts is common in quite every Grande École. I don't find nothing so interesting in this articles.
This event truly sucks. Teams must provide a giant straw which reaches from the ground to Ratner's upper deck. The team who can suck up a litre of water the fastest wins. You provide the bucket.
Anyone know the distance of this? It might be impossible if it's greater than 33 ft.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
"A demonstration of the edible electric pickle."
I have attached a pickle to an electric cord to make it (the pickle) glow. But I'm not sure if it was edible in that state. First of all, it was emitting burnt-pickle smoke. Second of all, the eater probably would have been electrocuted.
Then again, that's a small price to pay for science.
Maybe the first item on the list should have been "Another Web Server"
That blows
It's all good.
1.Ateammemberinlox.Ateammemberinstocks.Twosmokin?t eammembersinbarrels.[32points] .["0points] ,andbybad-ass,wemean?likesomethingthatcameoutofKai ?sPowerGooTM.?[31pointseach] /2004pattern.txt.[36points]
2.Ascratch-and-sniffmapofChicago.[36points]
3.Mandelbrotwurst.[17points]
4.TheLastAnnualScavHuntAll-StarGame.By7:00PMThursd ay,submitthreerésumésfromyourteam?sAll-StarScavHun ters(résuméformssuppliedatTheConclaveoftheCaptains ).TheseAll-StarswillcompeteforitemsonSaturdayafter noonwithAll-Starsfromopposingteams.["1+"2+"3points ]
5.Legallychangeyournametothemaximumlength.[37point s.10bonuspointsfornumbersorspecialcharacters,liket hosedumbCaliforniaplates.]
6.GiveaJudgedéjàvu.[11points]
7.Hawflakes.[2points]
8.Ateammember?sumbilicalcord,tobeeatenbythatteamme mber.[96points]
9.GiveaJudgedéjàvu.[11points]
10.You?vealreadygottenmarried,renouncedyourcitizen ship,andbeendeclaredlegallyinsaneforScavHuntspast, nowmightbeagoodtimetobeatadeadhorse.[1point]
11.FantasyScavHunt.BringateammembertoIdaNoyesbefor ethepartytodraftanAll-Starteam.TheAll-Starswillbef romotherteams,buttheywillrepresentyourScavHuntTeam
12.GiveafittingperformanceatEnoHall.Thengoroundbac kandgivehimtheclapp.[17points]
13.PhotographyourselfontheescalatorofTajMahal?slob by.Upordown?Youpick.It?sagamble![7or0points]
14.EntertheSeminaryCo-Opwearingonlybackpacksandsho ulderbags.[28points]
15.Createtwomappings:OnefromaCTAmapintoaUSmapandon efromtheUSmapintoaCTAmap.Wewantittolookrealbad-ass
16.AnEasy-BakeOvenwiththeSpecialEditionSylviaPlath inactionfigure.[15points]
17.AWillieNelsondollfromSuperBowlXXXVIII.[38points ]
18.Hi...we?reinDelaware...SetupabluescreenatJudgme nttomagicallywhisktheJudgesawaytoatropicalbeach, thegatesofHell,Delaware,andyourfavoriteplaceinthis world.[112points.20bonuspointsforfacialimpositiont hatmakesuslooksexyorpossiblylikeaJediMaster.Forget abouttheJudgeswhodon?tneedthelatter]
? 19.m=maroon;x=bluegreen;o=olive;p=purple;r=red;d=d arkgrey;l=lightgrey;b=black;w=white;g=green.Formor einformation,pleaseseehttp://scavhunt.uchicago.edu
20.Anoutofordersignthatisoutoforder.Noinfiniteregr essions.[5points]
21.AbrahamdidwhattoIsaac?!...OnlyinNewJersey.[6poi nts]
22.Ridethewhitehorses.Don?tgettoowet.TheAC?sonfull blast.[12points]
23.Holiestofwater,ACstyle.TrumpTrumpbaby,giveusabo ttle.[13points]
24.EattheWorld?sWorstApplePieinthebiggestrockingch air...ever![30points]
25.Wecouldn?tgetthisonepastLori. 26.VenusdeMidol.[34points]
27.?Wearestillontopofthewave...We,whoknowaboutAris totle,Plato,whoweavewordslikeanachronism,transcen- dentalist,cosmos,metaphysical,corollary,integer,mo narchical,intoourbreakfastspeechasamatterofcourse? ? Whoarewe,andaccordingtowhom(atleastin1953,whenthis previousPulitzerprize?winningauthordescribedusassu ch)?[19.53points]
28.Haveacomputercombustthroughnothingbutitsowninte rnalworkings.[32points]
29.ProverbsIV:7-Wisdomistheprincipalthing;therefor egetwisdom:andwithallthygettinggetunderstanding. Calligraphthenplaceonparchment,theScavengerHuntRSO bylaws.Putthembehindglassafteryouhaveagedthedocume
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
My Tatoo is on slashdot...
I mean, dang, I'd hate to be the sorry bastard with that tatoo....
1) SCO's Case
-- http://www.vle.org
Note that it didn't say Mr. Potatohead.
Geez, the Scavenger hunt is getting more expensive every year. And now the contestants have to add to their expenses a return bus ticket from Illinois to Alabama?
Saddam Hussein - check
Weapons of Mass Destruction - check
the 'most-wanted' deck - check
I have that tatoo already, and for five dolars, you can use me in your game.
http://www.unixauthority.com/~fiskeja/list2004.pdf
Comeon. They're married. Really, what are the odds of this hunt taking place on Mr. Potatohead's birthday?
-Peter
10. Mayor Daley the First
9. An effective WinXP security patch CD
8. 11,000 Bush vote ballots brought home early in 2001 by Bill "Lex Luthor" Daley and hidden in a landfill.
7. My car keys!
6. (still missing)
5. The Beagle
4. 8,700 ballots from 1960 election marked as votes for Nixon.
3. WMD's
2. Meigs Field
1. Jimmy Hoffa
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
There is probably a college student dumb enough to get the tattoo.
They better post a picture.
In traditional Slashdot mannner, I haven't RTFA or even the previous posts (they looked dangerous) but this seems to be an (at least partially) online Scavenger hunt. I imagine this kind of thing would have been alot of fun back when the interweb was in it's infancy, but wouldn't it be rather easy these days with modern search engines such as Google? Or are they in cahoots? >:/
Huh? What's this about breeding with the Olsen twins?
Actually the first year of the scavenger hunt was 1987. This is the 18th Scavenger Hunt. I was also at the first year. It's amazing what it has grown into...
Teams must provide a giant straw which reaches from the ground to Ratner's upper deck
though i suppose you could just have a long straw and a "bucket" with an extremelly thick base and just coil up the straw.
NERDS!!!!
I can't even correct a typo without making a typo....
No one can pump their own gas in New Jersey.
Thats what we call it in India.
One of the items on the list from a hunt I participated back home was a cadet from the ROTC equivalent in full uniform with left half of his mustache shaved... and a hair thats atleast 3 feet long...
i was begging long haired women on campus to donate me a hair... and I finally turned up in full uniform including heavy boots with the left half of my mustache shaved. The organizers then tell me that i was looking quite revolting and i should have shaved my right half too.. they never mentioned anything about the right half in the wish list.
"Have a computer combust through nothing but its own internal workings" Ok, there has to be some /.'ers here who can and have already done this!
Ah, another scavhunt! I wonder if they ever found the zombie they were looking for during mine...
Was it a UC prank or part of the hunt, when several UC students stole a Chicago Police Department cruiser (maybe stole is the wrong word), dismantled it, and reassembled it on the roof of the Museum of Science and Industry?
The story goes they started the lights and siren up before leaving, thus insuring attention, as if people might not notice a cop car on the roof otherwise.
Is this an urban legend or did it happen? I'm not having much luck with trying to Google it.
Maybe they will put Gores long lost presidential votes on the list this year.
Want to cover the roof of the museum with cops and cop cars? Just open a donut shop. If you build it, they will come.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
You pose naked with the hunted material.
I know I'm naive, but does someone have a list of items ACTUALLY acquired and how they worked? I never understood half of the things on these lists... it does sound incredibly interesting...
All I saw of the site before it was Slashdotted was the index page with all the butterflys.
But I have to ask all of you...were they really butterflies?? I think not! They were all Death Head Moths from Silence of the Lambs
"...I do wish we could chat longer, but I'm having an old friend for dinner. Bye..."
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. -- Hunter S. Thompson
A good one form the 2002 list was: A CT scan of a Furby (206 points; 75 bonus points for visible tumors or hemorrhages)
[Please sign here]
Sealed air tight bucket With 2 connections.
1. Straw passing through hard rubber seal
2. Low pressure (150 psi) air compressor or scuba tank and regulator to charge your bucket.
With the straw at the bottom, water will flow up hill.
about the meaning of "scavhunt" until it was explained, shore glad sum of us have an edumacation
...to put that Willie Nelson doll from Super Bowl XXXVIII you've been hiding away up on eBay...
Block all exhaust ports, stop all of the fans, and put in a 15k RPM drive or overclocked CPU.
Depending on the exact strictness of the 'nothing but', you can either place something inside that's likely to combust, or at the very least, use an old system that's filled with dust.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
101. The Broodwich
Too bad all they'll be able to find is the sun dried tomatoes.
Say the distance to the top is 40 feet. Bring a 39 foot tall bucket and fill it to the top. Stick your 40 foot straw into it (thus reaching the ground). The water level in the straw will be (approximately) the same as the water level in the bucket. Just suck it the remaining foot.
Life is short: void the warranty.
The extended list lists it as phytophilia
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
... of -2 morale (military effectiveness), +2 industry, +2 economy and maybe an efficiency boost in SMAC/X (Sid Meier's Aplha Centauri)
Note that the item doesn't say "gasoline" specifically, either. It says "pump your own damn gas in new jersey."
The solution is as simple as:
1. Go to new jersey
2. Acquire pump
3. Use it to pump a damn gas of your choice. (Air is handy)
Hell, just breathing there probably counts as "pumping a gas."
I'd be more worried about fulfilling the "damn" part of the requirement-- you may have to curse the gas, or coerce the gas into comitting a sin before pumping it.
Find an AT machine. (ATX PSUs probably won't do this). Connect any one of the case LED jumpers to the power switch connector with the polarity right.
Plug in machine. What you have done, essentially, is used the LED as a dead short across the power switch. The tiny wire on that connector will not handle the high current, and the insulation will be on fire before you can say "hey, I made it through POST!"
I can confirm it works, having done it on accident once. Computer was fine, but it stunk in my room for days. The PSU fan moves that nasty plastic smoke into your room very effectively.
Try the alternate Adobe Reader Download Page
All of the software, less of the HTML insanity.
That being said, I prefer XPDF. On many occasions I've found it can open PDFs that Acrobat (even Professional) can't, due to file corruption or strange PDF generation techniques. Highly recommended.
Whoever designed level 61 in Frozen Bubble is a sadistic bastard.
216. Queef. [9.9 points]
WTF?
Nope. 1985. Chris strauss headed up the judging and tormented his own Hitchcock team.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Never put roadkill as a high value item on a scavenger hunt for teenagers.
I still remember the "6-inch oe larger statue of Sadam Hussein made entirely of chewed gum" that Rich made for scav hunt in 1991. I have pictures. I also remember getting married for scav hunt in... um... 1998. Yeah, I think it was '98. Ahhh. 48 hours of wedded... -ness. I saw a guy get a tattoo for scav hunt in like '95. And around that time I saw my (not yet) friend (and /.er) Molly get her head shaved.
Heh. Molly rules.
A student created a movie about it a few years ago called The Hunt.
The real hunt is finding the website after it has been slashdotted...
What if they work at a gas station as a gas pumper?
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
A really big, loosely packed feather pillow.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
Dan Quayle, that disguise is fooling no-one.
Tehnically, two lawyers are mentioned. Eric G. Carter "submitted this asinine tripe" and Brandon Moseley was ordered substituted as attorney-in-charge.
My other sig is a starship
Get on an elevator in NJ and fart. Repeat until you can get someone else on the elevator to say something with the word "damn" in it.
In this case, you will have definitely "pumped your own damn gas." The gas will be damned, the gas will be your own, and you will have pumped it. In New Jersey.
Or you could just get a motorcycle, or possibly a small can of gasoline and a small handheld pump. But where's the spirit in that?
During the U of C scavenger hunt in the spring of 1991, one of the items that I was responsible for finding was one of the (many) decorative banners that covered a construction area outside the Ohio State Building in Columbus.
My girlfriend and I were spotted by police during the heist, which resulted in a short and successful chase through some of the parking lots and streets of downtown Columbus. Well, sort of successful. I clipped the bumper of a box truck during the getaway and staved in the door of the car I was driving.
But since I was going to be scavenger hunting in Ohio for the next 48 hours, I didn't want to keep worrying about being pulled over for evading arrest by some cop who thought I might be a terrorist or something. So I went to the nearest police station and turned myself in.
The desk sargeant there listened to my story (completely nonplussed I might add), and asked, "Is this some sort of sorority thing?" What a deflating question for a 19 year-old guy.
Nonetheless, after a $50 fine (which I am pretty sure went into his beer fund, but I wasn't going to argue because I had just talked my way out of a much more serious problem) he let me keep the banner. And because I told the police that other people would be coming to steal more stuff from the state house, I don't believe that anyone else got one of those banners.
Now who says the U of C isn't a fun place?
Punch a hole in the side at 1.5 feet. That way you don't have to overcome the hydraulic drag of flowing through a 40' foot straw. To avoid having to look at which end is which, do both ends. No one specified the topology of the 'straw'.
dmanny
My favorite so far:
Is that at a keg in your pants, 'cause I wanna tap that ass. No really, I do. Must be fully functional as both pants and as a keg holder. [54 points]
$8.95/mo web hosting
That would be a great hard to find item.
A couple I know is fulfilling one of the long-term items that requires them to be handcuffed to each other until Sunday (each year, the list includes a few of these long-term payoff items). Note that there's absolutely no leniancy there; thus, they have to go to the bathroom together, eat together, shower together, et cetera.
The funny thing is, the standard reaction people give when encountering them handcuffed to each other is some variant of "Oh, so, uh, you went and got married?"
-D
Glad that high opinions of matrimony persist in this country.
1987 was the first year. The article is correct. I was one of the first four judges with Cassie Scharf, Nolan McCarty and Chris Straus. Rick Jeffries, A.B. '90
Are you sure? It wasn't 1986? I'd left by then, but I assisted the Hitchcock team.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Actually, you're right. It was 87. My mistake. I know because I supplied Paris metro tickets to the Hitch team and I hadn't ever been to Paris until February that year.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
So THATS what all those weiners were doing in the Virgin MegaStore on Michigan Ave. Here I was, killing time looking for something worthwile to buy, and buncha lil' snot-nosed punks in the anime section come in looking for something they couldn't pronounce. Here's a clue fuckwads, just because you can't pronounce it doesn't mean its funny.
I agree with Murray Newton Rothbard:
"the good stuff in Ayn's system is not Ayn's original contribution at all; that there is an underlying, but as I've written you, growing philosophic position beginning with Aristotle where it is set forth - the ideas of a rational ethics based on the nature of man and found by reason. Once one begins to read this material, he finds that Ayn is not the sole source and owner of the rational tradition, nor even the sole heir to Aristotle."
"Ayn takes the Aristotelian rationalist tradition, and goes off on her own variant which I am convinced is a horrible perversion of a sound system."
- Rothbard to Richard C. Cornuelle, August 11, 1954, Rothbard Papers
Haws are a kind of fruit, I think. I remember eating haws on a stick in Beijing. Haw flakes should be easy to make, if you can find the haws.
284) A keyboard with a space bar :-)
www.christopherlewis.com
That is the single most poorly-formatted thing I have ever seen in my entire life.
Why, did I mention antique plane parts in the scavenger list?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Go to Big Five or SportsMart. Buy a new jersey. Put it on. Pump gas in own state.
The University of Virginia was host to a scavhunt this year, modeled off of the U of C one. A team from Chicago helped judge and everything.
http://www.binc.li/scavhunt/
Not quite on the scale of the original, but a lot of fun nonetheless.
WARNING: Above link is to one of those nice sites that spams your computer with windows to porn that you cannot possibly shut down until your computer crashes, or until you force quit your browser.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
1. get a bucket
2. get any straw
3. set bucket on deck
4. take hammer and smash outlet on deck.
5. make sure straw touches the BLACK wire.
6. Slurp away.
I remember doing the frosh week scavenger hunt at Waterloo, oh so many years ago. I mooned for "chemical weapons factory". It was the proudest moment of my university career.
Ahhh, back in the days when the Scavenger Hunt was a real challenge, and we slept out for classes. I'll never forget Sleepout 1989... 20 degrees F overnight, huddled under blankets on the frozen ground in front of Harper. All the people who were there for the fun and comraderie took their chattering teeth home with them by midnight. All of us who were there to get the classes we wanted toughed it out straight through till dawn. I don't think I saw a single person, even the ones who had been bragging about their North Face down jackets, who wasn't shivering badly, those deep, convulsive shivers that make your hands shake so badly you can't hold a cup of coffee or even sign your name to the registration form.
Those were the days when a Maroon was a Maroon. How badly do you want Bevington's Shakespeare class? How badly do you want Ruddat's Plant Physiology? How badly do you need that Chemical Thermodynamics class in Spring Quarter, not Fall, dammit, Spring!
They're all wimps now. Harold's is all prettied up, the C Shop is a Pizza Hut, and Morrie's is a Starbucks.
Pity. It built character.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
>The list of items and tasks for the 2004 version of >the infamous University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt >(or scavhunt for short) is up as a PDF. As a >veteran of the first hunt in 1985, I'm glad to see >the youngsters carrying on the madness. I hate to be a pendant, but I'm one of the authors of the first UofC Scavenger Hunt List, and we wrote it in 1987. In 1985 I wasn't even out of high school.
I thought I'd look in to see what I could find, and there seems to be a lot of alumni on this list. I'm a current ScavHunter looking for the 1992 Scav Hunt List - did anyone hang on to it? Would be absolutely wonderful if someone does have it! :)
Judgement Day Tomorrow!
Um, we also need the Scav Hunt list of 1987 - of course 1992 and 1987 are the lists we can't find on the internet! Does anyone remember the items of 1987? Thanks!
Just returned from judgment, and thought I'd post a quick rundown.
Snell Hitchcock won by more than 1500 points.
Max Palevsky was second.
The FIST was third.
-Judge Karl