The Go Game

September 15th, 2002

Saturday, I finally got the opportunity to play a game of "The Go game" (http://www.thegogame.com).

It's a scavenger hunt where the clues are transmitted to you on cell phones supplied by the organizers, along with a digital camera (to prove that you solved the riddles) and a bunch of other props needed at various times during the game.  Teams are typically made of six members (I only know one of them, I met the other four members that day).

The pictures for our game are now available at http://www.thegogame.com/brownie/users/team.asp?rosterID=615&gamedayID=27

The organizers do a very decent job at making the tests not too hard, but it's still not very easy to reach 100%, especially since some of them, called "judgeable", will be graded by your peers at the end of the day.  Needless to say that the people you play with contribute greatly to making this day enjoyable, but based on what I see, everybody who bothers signing up and paying the $25 (a bargain for a whole day of entertainment) usually have the required mindset to make this day a memorable one.

I don't want to disclose too much of the riddles, even though the organizers go to great lengths to renew them at each game so that players can return and still have fun, so I will just list some highlights:

• We got to run ourselves ragged all over North Beach.
• We successfully avoided Carrot-Top, who was running around after us with a loaded can of silly-string.
• We performed the can-can in front of Caffe Puccini, much to the chagrin of innocent passers-by.
• We ridiculed strangers. 
• We defiled public spaces. 
• We lost a contested fish race and won a contested game of Rock-Paper-Scissors.
• We turned sullen singles into a comatose couple without even marrying them.
• We contributed to the cultural understanding gap between the old folks of Chinatown and white SF yuppies.
• We wore trash we pulled out from underneath parked cars and committed minor property crimes against other parked cars.
• We embarrassed an innocent driver who had the misfortune to be parked near Washington Square by asking him if it was okay to "get frisky in the backseat"
• We made fun of an unwilling participant because he was wearing a purple t-shirt
• We shot a masterpiece reenactment of Humpty-Dumpty transposed during the feminist era
• We defaced public monuments while making fun of Muni (a low blow, but other teams did worse)
• We aced complex mathematic riddles (all two of them, and they involved numbers that had more than two digits in them)
• We choreographed "Cirque de Mugging" in front of City of Lights while we synchronized ballet moves with our lead actor, Elliot sporting pantyhose on his head and the peer judging when we got to see the immense, comic creativity of other teams.

One of the riddles involved making up a bumper sticker that would "make the traffic stop".  Here are the best ones:

• "Dick Cheney is hiding in my trunk"
   
• "Enron gave me $1 million. Ask me how"
   
• "Free Nelson Mandela
   Free John Walker Lindh
   Free PORN!"

Thanks to my team for being so fun and also for contributing to this short report...

Elliot, Wariya, Leslie, Gabriella and Melissa:  you all kick major butt.  Go Crouching Tigers!

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