CLUE #97-101 FOUND!

The initial clue is a conversation between a dinosaur puppet and my son, but it is playing in reverse. Here is the same video playing the correct direction. 




Dinohunter Jeff sent over this synopsis of the final dinohunt: 

First clue was a video with a puppet saying "Snow Park" backward. Went to Snow Park, chatted with Michael about the position of a building in the video. The building wasn't in Snow Park. I saw two other people trying to find it, I waved them over and we chatted for a bit. We all decided to bail, and as I was walking out I saw the dino sticker and a chalk arrow outside the park. I again waved the couple (Jacob/Jen) over and we followed the stickers/arrows to a dock where Jacob found a fishing tackle box on the end, hanging off a chain in the water.

Second clue - Big dino jigsaw puzzle in tackle box. All three of us worked on it while some random person was taking photos of us. Had numbers on the back -- like 3+3= 9= etc, so we ended up with a bunch of numbers. Simple letter substitution got us CORNER OF HARRIS & 15 so Harrison / 15th.

Third clue - a flyer wheatpasted to side of trashed building. I call it the Dump House because that's where you take a dump, apparently. Image of Han Solo & Webster (the li'l dude w/the TV series), along with a lot of strange text at top. Also an image of one of those darling Chinese carry-out boxes, and a cupcake with a "1" candle on it. And there was a hand in the middle of Han/Webster with eight fingers. So we ended up ignoring the text and working on the image -- something on eighth between Harrison and Webster. Went there, and duh -- it was First Cake, one of the two bakeries in Chinatown I go to. Big bulletin board between a restaurant (the take-out box) and First Cake (the cupcake w/the "1"). Found a flyer with Chinese-stylized English.

Fourth clue - the flyer had a photo of a house on it, and I TOTALLY KNEW THAT HOUSE -- it's a burnt-out thing that you see coming out of the tube from Alameda .. it has been sitting around for awhile, but recently construction has started on the house[1]. Mounted to the house was a metal Makita drill box that had a sticker on it: "DO NOT REMOVE UNDER PENALTY OF DINOSAUR ATTACK" ... looks like it worked ... inside was a small pterodactyl figurine with a small tag on it that said "Please find my home" and a box.

Fifth clue -- inside the box, another jigsaw puzzle. This one had paragraphs of text about dinosaurs on the back of each piece, and letters were circled to indicate that we should go to RED PAGODA ALICE 7 ... the pagoda across the street, on the corner of Alice and 7th. There was a small black birdhouse hanging up on the pagoda, pretty high up. I didn't think it was anything, but after scouring the area, Jacob came back and looked at it, and there was a switch on the back -- it lit up the inside. Unfortunately there was a smokey plastic window over the hole, so we could just barely make out a dinosaur inside, and behind -that-, the Oakland-Alameda border tiles in the Posey tube. I actually pushed the window out a little way to see if a bit of text to the right was important, but it was just the Oakland city limits sign. Then Jen boosted Jacob up to re-tie the birdhouse to the pagoda, we had to cut it down to look at it.  Then we walked into the tunnel to go to the tiles ... and there was an encoded phrase written on the sidewalk.

Sixth clue -- we tried to figure it out for a couple of minutes, but the noise/etc was crazy so we walked back and cranked on it in the shade. It took awhile -- I thought it was going to be rot13, but it turned out to be rot12. That might have been ... 45 min? Because I had bailed on the rot theory early on when rot13 didn't work. I was talking to Doc about it via cellphone asking him if he could find a "rotEVERYTHING" website and he sent me the answer as I had just figured it out (I am looking at my first guesses and I had "AT" nailed, I just didn't extend that out like I did with IS IF and TO; -and- I suspected "AT" the most because you know, directions ... oh, and I thought the code word "CTT" was going to be "SEE" or "TOO" ... not "OFF" ... okay then). The clue was something like WASH OFF AT LATHAM FOUNTAIN which is in the little "v" of Broadway and Telegraph.

Seventh clue -- There were six dinosaur cut-outs scattered in the plants in the fountain. One side had the word "OAK TREE" spread out among the dinosaurs (we stalled on that until Jen typed in the phrase on all of the dinosaurs, QUERCUS, the street name of oak trees everywhere). The other side had a bunch of letters. Jacob used the Internet Anagram Server to pull the word "PLAZA" out of the word scramble, and we tried to add "OAK" to it until I noticed that "FRANK" was in there because the Frank O. Agawa (something like that) Plaza was right nearby. We went to the plaza and headed straight to the oak tree, and just as we got there Jacob saw a guy pull at least two paintings out of the tree. He didn't know they were the paintings -- he hadn't seen the initial clue photo posted on the site -- so he didn't say anything at first. I saw the guy leave the tree, but I hadn't paid attention and didn't notice that he had anything with him. We looked around a bit more, I was running out of time on the meter, so I gave my cellphone # to them, drove them to their car ... that's when we put the whole "guy taking paintings" thing together ... I dropped them off, then I tried to find a free spot close to the tree, couldn't ... and bailed.

Postscript -- Jacob called me and said they had gone back and talked to the guy -- he apparently had four or all five paintings. He gave them two, he kept one for himself, and he put one back in the tree (I believe) ... I think he did that after Jacob explained to him that this was part of a scavenger hunt because it seemed pretty clear we were the first people to get that far (we re-packed each of the clues before we left each location). Then he called me up and insisted I take one of the paintings, so we're going to arrange that in the future. 

The Dinohunt closes out with something I always expected would happen more: a hobo walked off with the paintings. I hope everyone who participated had fun, I'll be posting my thoughts on the whole experience in a day or so.

TOMORROW AT SUNRISE

FINAL CLUE POSTS TOMORROW AT 5:47 AM PST

Please remember: do not remove the clues! 

The current hunt leads to 5 paintings instead of the previously reported 4. 

It is an on-your-honor system, so please only take one. 

Good luck, see you in the morning.

UPDATE

The clue for the final Dinohunt with paintings 97-100 will be posted early on June 22nd 2013. 

Please spread the word. 

If you've already found a painting, please encourage your friends to participate.

Thanks.

CLUE #96

CLUE #95 - FOUND!

CLUE #94 - FOUND!

CLUE #93 - FOUND?

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*UPDATE*

I'm heading out of town for the next 24 hours, and I'll be taking some dinosaur paintings with me to hide. I'm stoked to have the opportunity to get out of town and hide some more paintings for you to find!

I'd like to ask if you have already found a painting to NOT go look for these next three paintings. Let someone else have a chance, please.

I'll be posting clues as soon as I'm out hiding them. Thanks for participating!

CLUE #92 - FOUND!

Congratulations to Jim Espinas for finding Dinosaur #92!

Here's what Jim had to say about the hunt:

I've been tracking the dino hunt for some time now. Sometimes I got really close (I think). When you posted Clue #92, I printed out the puzzle and looked it at on my commute home. Someone next to me asked what I was doing and I explained to him that there are no additional clues so everything you need to figure out the puzzle is on the page. I started at the star and figured out the chicken sandwich clue and immediately knew you were referring to Bakesale Bettys. I've been falling in line for chicken sandwiches for years! Five hours later I visited Bakesale Betty's and found the old man clue. 

 

 

 

I took a picture then worked on it this morning on my commute to work. I unscrambled it and made the connection to Hoopers right as Bart pulled into MacArthur station and impulsively decided to jump off then take a taxi to find the next clue. 

 

A woman watering the lawn at Hoopers asked what I was looking for when I found the Hooper clue. (the clue was "The Kanadian khamp, Khris Eyres of New Westminster, BC, ate 18 in 12 minutes in 2001.") I read it out loud and she said, "well, I know a hot dog contest takes about 12 minutes." The things people know! So I asked her if there are any hot dog places in the area and she said "Sure, there's Kasper's across the street but its closed" All the while I'm explaining to the cab driver what I'm doing so when we arrived at Kasper's he jumped out of the car too. I found painting #92 then feeling victorious I asked the driver to take me to work. 

I'm so glad to finally get one. My 4 year old son will be so thrilled to add the T-Rex to his wall.

CLUE #91

Instagram - @XAdamDX / #dinohunt

CLUE #86-90 FOUND!

*This is a long hunt with a lot of clues leading to five different paintings. The paintings are all hidden in different locations. PLEASE do not remove the clues, EXCEPT for when you come to a clue later in the hunt. Without giving too much away, its something round. Please email me or tweet at me if you find a clue has been removed or destroyed: xadamdx(at)gmail(dot)com / @XAdamDX

This clue leads to the starting point, 1916 Webster St in Alameda. I originally had the clue leading to 1913, but before I even had a chance to fix it someone had found one of the paintings, so I guess it didn't effect the odds too much. The original Skippy manufacturing plant was at this location, and now all that remains is a small, easy to overlook plaque. On the back of the plaque I left directions:

If I was a billionaire, I would live in the house located at 1601 Central (which faces onto Paru) and I wouldn't change a thing about it. From the domed turret and the gryphons over the doors, to the weird orange paint job, it's such a cool looking house.

The directions from here led hunters through an old section of Alameda. The street names have all been changed, but the North-South streets used to be all named for birds, and the West-East streets were all named for fish:

I left a trail of clues to help hunters orient themselves, but I didn't space them out well enough. The trail of clues dried up toward the end.

Nearly everyone found themselves turned around toward the end, thinking they needed to head into the marina instead of down Buena Vista. I wound up having to give a little bit of help to help get people beyond this point, which meant checking my emails and twitter a lot this weekend. (That's the toll of trying to set these things up as a new parent on limited sleep. Try your hardest and wind up messing things up. ahh well.)

Also, several people didn't realize exactly how small the shack would be:

On the roof of the shack was a pterodactyl, and if you arrived in the dark, you would have found ominous glowing lights shining down onto the clue, a substitution cypher. Even if you didn't find all of the bread crumbs on the way here, it was still solvable. The clues just made it easier.

This decoded to SHORELINE DRIVE across, and PARK STREET vertically.
Arriving at this intersection, taped to the bottom of a pole, was a phone number: (510)522-9901
Hunters who called this number found that no one answered, but a payphone nearby started to ring! Inside of the phone book clam shell case, was another substitution cypher:

This decodes to ELSIEROEMER.
Elsie Roemer has a bird sanctuary nearby, about a block from the payphone.

On a small pier that juts out into the sanctuary, I made a small nest, and I filled that nest with dinosaur eggs! (this was the "round" item I eluded to at the beginning)

Each of the eggs had a small plastic dinosaur inside, and attached to that dinosaur was a small strip of paper, giving the location of a painting. These were the locations where I hid paintings #86-90:

 

• Fountain at High & Encinal (this painting was sitting out in the open, leaning against it)
• Leftmost fence post, facing Lincoln Park (the iron work outside of this park is amazing)
• Rightmost fence post, facing Lincoln Park 
• End of Chestnut, at Clinton (a small parklet next to the lagoon, under a dilapidated bench)
• Old Service Station, Corner of Santa Clara & Oak (hung from string, into the mail slot)

 

TEN MORE PAINTINGS TO GO!

CLUE #81-85 FOUND!

This hunt took place in Oakland. QR codes were planted that led to these videos:

These videos were all edited down from the video for the song Marvelous Mess, by my old band DESA. I wanted to revisit the locations from this video. I lived in Oakland for almost ten years, and working on this hunt brought back a lot of memories.

My friend Andrew Juncker filmed and edited the original video, which he screened at Cannes!

Ron Bullock is the actor. He's an all around rad dude, and actually tried to complete this hunt. Wouldn't that have been weird to run into him during this hunt?

CLUE #80 - FOUND!

CLUE #79 - FOUND!

CLUE #78 - FOUND!

Update: I've determined that the current clue is too hard, and is also missing a piece. 

Here is a key:

xXXXx = o

Also, between lines 4 and 5, this is missing: XxxXX

Hope that helps!

CLUE #77 - FOUND!

 

 I'd like to thank the Elsewhere Philatelic Society for installing this.

CLUE #76 - FOUND!

CLUE #75 - FOUND!

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