Friday, May 11, 2012

PROPS. ALL PROPS MUST CONTINUE TO BE MAD PROPS:  If it's Mother's Day weekend, that means that hundreds of University of Chicago students are now somewhere between the Windy City and (for this year) Iowa, working on such Scavenger Hunt tasks as:
  • This is my stapler. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My stapler is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. My stapler, without me, is useless. Without my stapler, I am useless. I must bind my documents true. Bring your Swingline 747 Classic and one cleaning tool of your choice to Judgment, dismantle the stapler into eight pieces, present for inspection, reassemble, load a fresh clip, and put the finishing touch on [the ScavHunt list]. [7.47 points, plus 1 point for every minute under 5]
  • Render a group portrait of the current Supreme Court, one justice represented in each of the following styles: manga, Mii, Ralph Steadman, H.R. Giger, Jules Feiffer, Raymond Briggs, Matt Groening, Jack Kirby, Al Hirschfeld. [9 points]
  • Using no kits, no electronics, no parts from other timepieces, and no more than $75 worth of purchased supplies (please provide receipts), construct a clock and deliver it between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. Sunday to the Ida Noyes library. There, you may make one calibration, but no one may touch your clock after 8 a.m. Clocks will be judged at noon. [60 points for accuracy to within 5 minutes at noon, 30 more points for accuracy to within one minute, and 10 more points if the clock could plausibly function accurately for more than three days]
  • A Jacob’s Ladder that, when flipped, tells the story of your team’s descent into hell. [9 circles of points]
  • La Cucaracha, la cucaracha, ya no puede caminar! At the Captain's Operatory, each team will be given one (1) cockroach. If you wish, you can be its friend, a lifelong bond. However, you may also opt for bonds of a different sort: metallic. Make your choice, and at Judgment present your cockroach either alive, with a bowtie and top hat, or dead, and electroplated. [10 points for mercy, 25 points for murder]
  • History is written by the victors, but fuck that shit. Where would Europe be if not for the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth? Bring an authentic map from its era that displays the greatest nation ever to be shafted by the history books. [28 points]
  • The gory opening of Foucault’s Discipline and Punish rubs some people the wrong way. Create an adorable substitute for those of us offended by such things: hang, draw, and quarter a teddy bear. [4 points]
  • A card-carrying Republican faculty member of the Humanities Division. [5 points]
  • Hey nerds, we know you’ve been to the National Spelling Bee and the National Geography Bee, but
  • now it’s time for a real rümbøl. This time, instead of your atlas or dictionary, ready your 2012 Ikea’alog for the National Ikea®Bii. Send your regional champion to the Harper 135 at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday for a püblic tëst. Yöu will provide the correct “Swedish” name for photos of given pieces of Ikea® furniture. [15 points for first place, 10 points for second place, 5 points for third place, 2 points for participation]
  • So you’re going to be Vincent Cassel, and we’re going to be doing that scene in Ocean’s 12, only instead of getting through a laser field, you’re going to need to get through a maze of string. At 2:00 p.m. on Saturday in the McCormick Tribune Lounge, show us what you’ve got. [12 points, plus up to 3 extra points for style]
  • Zoinks! Assemble the largest multi-tiered sandwich you can muster(d) in the style of Scooby Doo. True to form, your sandwich should be assembled by shuffling the ingredients (rifle method, please) into a single gargantuan deck of meat, cheese, and bread. [8 points]

4 comments:

  1. A few other great ones:

    Have two team members, appropriately attired, comment on the presentation of all the items on this page in the manner of the most vicious, incisive, yet also fair and balanced critics of our era: Statler and Waldorf.

    Die Hard 2: Die Harder may well be the best sequel name of all time, but we think the franchise has been getting lazy of late. Live Free or Die Hard? 2013’s A Good Day to Die Hard? What’s next—Driving Miss Die Hard? A Streetcar Named Die Hard? Send your troupe of up to three improv
    actors to the BSLC at 8:00 p.m. on Thursday, where they will be asked to act out scenes from Die
    Hards yet to come.

    King’s Landing and The Twins are all right, I guess, but we’d rather see something a little more
    neo-Gothic. Produce a map of the UofC campus that when triggered erects a clockwork version of a
    campus building of your choice.

    Up at the Law School they work all day. Out in the sun they slave away. Couldn’t they use the
    distraction of mermaids in their fountain?

    Show those Juggalos the true miracle of magnetism with some ferrofluid choreography set to the
    appropriate song.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Watts9:30 AM

    A Cabin in the Woods style merman* would have been more interesting.

    (*It's been out a month and that's deliberatey vague - bring it on, spoiler police)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Genevieve11:02 AM

    Please tell me that the Supreme Court portraits will be posted online. I need to see the Mii and Raymond Briggs and Hirschfeld versions.

    ReplyDelete
  4. lisased4:08 PM

    Search for 2012 Scavhunt on YouTube throughout the weekend. Sometimes they post their activities for the judges and other non-Chicago area fans.

    ReplyDelete