The rhinos must be getting smarter. The week four rhino eluded capture until Thursday, a new record! This weeks winners were Jim and Debi Wilkins-Luton. You can read their story on the Living Hope Church blog. Congratulations Jim and Debi!
Our efforts to track this cunning beast were less then successful. Failing to correctly identify the letters in clue one pretty much did us in with little hope for recovery.
Clue 1 - A bunch of fuzzy letters.
Since the first clue last week was posted Sunday, my now weekly routine of staring at the Where's Rhino page pressing F5 over and over and over started a day early. That combined with the fact that the clue wasn't posted until after noon on Monday resulted in a few hundred thousand extra keystrokes this week. By noon on Monday I'm getting a little bit hungry, tired and frustrated. The fact that I now had repetitive stress injury in all of my fingers didn't help either. Time to take a break and get some lunch. While I'm eating, the phone rings. It's Pwilly letting me know that he has the first clue, it's the letters "SADF ASDF" and he's already searching for the meaning. I run back to the computer and press F5 yet again, and there it is, the red letters on the left side of the page linking to the first clue for the week. I click the link and get something completely different from what was just described. I quickly call back and have Pwilly refresh the page, sure enough, the clue has changed. Something fishy is going on...
First step, identify the letters. The first three words were pretty obvious, Stat row yuck, but the last one raised a few questions particularly with the middle two letters. Time to call in Fuzzy Letter Forensics Expert Pwilly. Pwilly recreated the image with several combinations, the one that we felt matched was "Stat row yuck cien". We were now very confident that we had the right letters.
Step two, figure out what the letters mean. There were a few ways to look at this, either the letters are scrambled, or they should be taken at face value. Since the words seems a bit weird I first tried to descramble the letters, given that there were so many possible combinations this didn't last very long. Next try for face value. Stat, row and yuck were pretty straight forward, but I didn't recognize cien. A quick Google search returns that cien means one hundred in Spanish. Googling for the combination of words resulting in nothing. I noticed that if you say the words out loud it could sound like other word, things like "Start your engine", or "State road junction". Pronouncing the names of the letters yielded "State road(route) you seek sign". Maybe it's behind a road sign somewhere?
Clue 2 - A map and a peom.
Again, clue two was also posted after noon. It sure would be helpful if they posted the clues at the same time every day. This randomness is wearing out my keyboard and fingers from all of the refreshing. The first thing I noticed about this clue was the misspelled word filling. There are also between one or three words that don't need to be capitalized depending on if you capitalize the start of each new line or not. Pwilly sends me a link to the Vancouver Parks and Recreation website, they have the exact same map with all of the cities and roads filled in! We try to match clue one with the cities on the map...nothing. Sarah calls and send a link to the same website and map. Hmmm, maybe they wanted us to find this site, it is the first result when you use google image search for clark county map vancouver.
If they wanted us to find the site, then maybe the letters from clue one match up with one of the parks...nothing. Ok, if letters are key, maybe clue one is some kind of cipher. I pull up a list of simple letter substitution ciphers and try to use the misspelled word, the extra capital letters and the word letters as a key...nothing.
Coogrrr sent me an anagram website. It's pretty slick, put in all the letters and it will spit out all the possible word combinations. The list was very long, but there wasn't anything too interesting.
Clue 3 - Four very blue pictures.
I'm getting used to the late clue posting by now. It makes it hard to hunt during my lunch break though. That blue color is annoying, photoshop makes quick work of that and it's much easier to see. The first picture looks like erosion control fabric on a hill. I still don't have a clue about the second picture. The third pic is of someone wearing a cap, and two more faces on the left side. The last picture is fabric the part of some letters.
The letters seem the most logical place to start. What could they be? An I or J, an N, a T, and an X or Y. Searching for INTY, INTX, JNTY, JNTX, a few were stock symbols, but none of the companies were in Clark County. It looks like they are on fabric possibly a jacket. What would be on a jacket? Those other combinations didn't work so well, but what if the first letter were half of a U? It must be County! Now we're thinking county workers. I go back to the list of anagrams with the word county; "west county rick a" or "rick county waste". Larissa called the county waste department, but they didn't know anything about Rick, or the rhino, another dead end.
Later that evening, I'm reading on the Living Hope blog and notice a new comment by lisa on the 11/29 Rhinosaurific post:
haha, my brain feels like it is going to explode, trying to figure out what "stat row yuck clen" has to do with that map! Counties? Neighborhoods? Something else entirely? *rubbing temples*
Maybe that letter in the last word was an L instead of an I. If so that gives us West Clark County! That makes perfect sense. We still don't have any ideas though.
Clue 4 - Blurry picture of a sign, some leaves, rocks, and the rhino.
This gives us a few ideas, and people spread out around town. Wendy was thinking the blind deaf school since everything was blurry and the mention of not being able to see in clue two. Larissa headed over to the Clark County Fairgrounds in search of the concession stand and the erosion fabric. Both searches return nothing. Pwilly suggested going to the parks that had concession stands listed as a feature, but before we could send our teams in, the website was updated. The rhino had been found!