By Callan Smith | Rose Law Group Reporter
Puzzles are something most of us equate to single-player brain games such as crosswords, not a race like The 66th Annual AZ Treasure Hunt, which took place November 12th. Seventy-eight teams traveled over roughly three-hundred square miles throughout the valley, getting clues and solving puzzles, all with the goal of reaching the finish line.
Some of the clues consisted of a series of images printed on a piece of paper hung at a destination. While others required on the spot puzzle-solving to find the next clue. Rose Law Group’s own, Katie Honecker participated and took second place with her team The Kicks.
Rose Law Group Reporter: How many years have you been participating?
Katie Honecker: This is my second year participating in this race, but my husband and I joined an existing team that had played a couple of years before we joined.
Rose Law Group Reporter: What drew you to the contest?
Katie Honecker: My husband and I love games and had participated in several Scavenger Dashes in the past. We heard that the clues in this scavenger hunt were more challenging, which appealed to us, but I also liked that we would be playing with our friends and traveling from Point A to B via a van instead of by foot.
Rose Law Group Reporter: What was the most interesting part of the hunt?
Katie Honecker: Most of the clues require more than one step to solve, which is where teamwork came into play. One person may solve the first part of the clue, another person may connect that answer to something else, and another person may connect it all to an icon on the map. I don’t recall any of the clues being solved without teamwork.
Rose Law Group Reporter: What was the most challenging puzzle?
Katie Honecker: The most challenging clue we encountered was the one we got wrong. When we arrived at the location, which was in the desert, we found two identical square displays with wooden puzzle pieces dangling from them that had to be correctly placed on the vertical board, which was filled with random letters. When we arrived, teams were frantically working at each display trying to solve the puzzle. Because the puzzle was posted vertical, the puzzle pieces had to be held in place by the team members. Luckily, the engineer on our team knew how to solve the puzzle, because he recognized it as a classic tangram. He convinced the team ahead of us to let him try. Once the pieces were in place, the holes in the puzzle pieces revealed 5 letters that spelled out pants. On our map was an icon of a pair of pants, so we drove there only to find a plastic jackass sculpture. That means you fell for the obvious answer. The correct answer turned out to be SpongeBob SquarePants, because the word pants was inside a square. Only 66% of the teams correctly answered this clue.
My favorite clue led us to a table with laptops open to a video game. There were no instructions, so we had to figure out how to work the video game, which was a maze. One of my teammates volunteered to play the mysterious game, and figured out that we needed to make our way through the maze and collect items. We first collected the letter “E,” then an archery bow, and then the head from Michelangelo’s statue of David. There may have been more clues, but I told our team that I knew that part of the answer, so we ran back to the van. The game’s clues spelled out David Bowie, in reverse (E + bow + David). Our team then put the rest of the clues together. We found David Bowie in the middle of a maze, or Labyrinth. In the movie Labyrinth, David Bowie played the Goblin King with Jennifer Connelly. On our map, we found a location marked “GK” that was in the middle of a neighborhood (another maze) and the road had been renamed to Jennifer Connelly Way.
Rose Law Group Reporter: Congratulations on your placing. Did you take home a prize?
Katie Honecker: You don’t play for the rewards because they are minimal, especially in light of the entry fee and cost to rent an extended van. Nevertheless, at the award ceremony, we received a huge applause, t-shirts, and bottles of Route 66 soda to commemorate this year’s theme “Get Your Kicks on Hunt 66.”
Rose Law Group Reporter: Will you be competing next year?
Katie Honecker: Of course, but now we have to be more careful. Coming in first place would be a double-edged sword. While you win, you also have to plan the event for the next three years, during which time you obviously can’t play. When we finished this year’s Hunt, our team would have been thrilled to finish in the top 50%. We thought we played well, but given that we were in 74th place last year, we never imagined winning. So, now that we’ve actually gotten close to winning, we’re going to have to be a little more careful in how we play to rank as high as possible without coming in first.
Rose Law Group Reporter: Is there anything else you would like to add?
Katie Honecker: Yes, I’d like to thank Victoria and Craig Whipp and Ryan Heisel and Brooke Shapiro-Heisel for inviting my husband, Greg Stephens, and me to join their team. We had a wonderful evening playing the game, so the actual results were simply icing on the cake. I’d also like to encourage anyone who likes to solve puzzles to assemble a team with diverse skills and knowledge and sign up to compete in next year’s Hunt.
For further information about the Arizona Treasure Hunt click here.
