PODCAST:

The Cville Puzzle Hunt will take place this Saturday March 14th, starting at the IX Art Park, at 2:30pm.

TRANSCRIPT:

Sara Bastianelli:

You’re listening to WTJU Charlottesville. For Arts This Week, we spoke with Greg Ochsenschlager and Emily Patterson about the Cville Puzzle Hunt. The puzzle hunt will take place this Saturday, starting at IX Art Park, at 2:30pm. For those who haven’t participated in past years, can you explain what exactly a puzzle hunt is?

Emily Patterson:

So The Puzzle Hunt has nothing to do with puzzles like jigsaw puzzles. Instead, it’s like brain teaser puzzles. So we describe it as part escape room, part scavenger hunt, and it starts at IX Art Park. And basically you go around downtown Charlottesville finding and solving puzzles. Basically, there’s four initial puzzles. So at the beginning of the puzzle hunt will give you the coordinates and the map that you need to find the puzzles. The puzzles are around downtown, and you find them, you solve them. I don’t want to give any hints away, and the answer to each one is a number which corresponds to the number these numbers on the back of the map. So then you come back to IX Art Park, and there’s like one final puzzle. So you’re going to use those answers that you got from the first four to solve the final puzzle, which will be a long, it’s like a whole bunch of things that you have to do, like you have to find this and then you have to go there, and you have to give this password, and the first team to complete it is the winner. But we usually let it go for a while, so we can get, like, 20 or so teams winning, and I think we have some prizes for what was it? the most?

Greg Ochsenschlager:

The most accurate team. most accurate team! that’s supposed to be puzzling in itself. What does that mean? What do I have to do to be the most accurate team.

Emily Patterson:

So this was the fifth annual one, and it all started because we used to go to a very similar event that was up in DC that was run by the Washington Post, called the Post Hunt. And then we moved down here from DC, and we were talking about how it would be great to have a puzzle hunt here, and it’d be so much fun because it could be downtown, and it’s very walkable. And then we started thinking through all the logistics of how to make that happen, and got, like quickly overwhelmed. So then fast forward a couple of years, and Greg actually put on a puzzle hunt at our house for our annual Christmas party that we do. And Nathan from WTJU was there, and I asked him, like, “Hey, would WTJU help us put on something similar, you know, in downtown Charlottesville?” And he agreed, it all came together. And now it’s the fifth one.

Sara Bastianelli:

What was your guys’s process for creating the puzzles this year?

Greg Ochsenschlager:

Yeah, we’re actually just talking about this sometimes, you know, like in the last couple we’ve had a theme going on. This year’s theme is baking, cooking confections kind of theme.

Emily Patterson:

Because this year it’s on 3/14 so it’s Pi Day, so it’s pie themed. And then, by extension, all baking.

Greg Ochsenschlager:

So, you know, we were pretty inspired by that. We don’t want to give away too much about it, but like, last year was the Revolutionary War, so we were inspired by this story. We heard about spies communicating through clothes on a clothesline, and different clothes would mean different things about troop movements or something. You know, we’re like, oh, we’re definitely gonna use that. But usually we have a mechanic we want to use, like, we want to use Tiktok for this one. So we kind of start with that idea and build it around there. Every year, I feel like we’re refining the process, like the very first one, but didn’t have a theme. The puzzles weren’t that complicated. Most of them could be solved in like, one or two steps, where now we’ve got, like, four or five, six step puzzles that you know you need to go to multiple locations and stuff, and we weren’t ready for how smart people were going to be. Like, there’s an end game puzzle that is supposed to bring everything together at the end, and you’re not supposed to be able to solve it till able to solve it till the end, but somehow, half a dozen teams like figured out the end game puzzle before we even presented it, and kind of almost won the competition before they were even supposed to. So we’ve definitely fine tuned it a little bit, and we’ve added the themes, which is really nice, I think.

Emily Patterson:

Yeah, we added puzzle testers too. So before, it was just Greg and I, and when you create something, you’re very close to it, so it’s good to have outside eyes look at it, make it sure it’s not too easy or too hard. So we now have a crew of puzzle testers, and we send them the puzzle stuff, and they go over it make sure it’s solvable.

Greg Ochsenschlager:

We always have a map of downtown Charlottesville that’s created by a local artist that’s very colorful and cartoony with a lot of different like, you know, icons on it. Like, sometimes they’ll be like weird stuff, like dragons, or, I don’t know, birds, or things like that. So anything that goes well with a map, too. So like, two years ago we did a pirate theme, because, yeah, pirate map that makes sense. Yeah. And then last year, with the Revolutionary War, it’s pretty fun to turn downtown Charlottesville into, like a colonial town on the map.

Sara Bastianelli:

Who is the local artist?

Greg Ochsenschlager:

She’s Emily Reifenstein, and she’s awesome, because we asked her to draw some crazy stuff. And you know, the first year, it was like, All right, there can’t be anything green on this map. And she’s like, Well, what about trees and stuff? I don’t know. You got to figure it out.

Emily Patterson:

There’s some weird requests. I don’t want to give away anything from this year?

Greg Ochsenschlager:

Yeah, she’s drawn a baby on a skateboard for a baby on board. I don’t know she’s awesome. You just tell her to draw something, and she draws it, and it always turns out even better than you kind of picture it in your head. We also, you know, like to make it very Charlottesville-y. We’ve featured local musicians have written songs for us that have hidden clues in them. Yeah, you know, we like to use, like, the the murals around town, and kind of build the puzzles into the landscape. And, you know, make people explore different parts of the city that maybe they don’t get around to. So we like to make it, you know, very uniquely Charlottesville.

Sara Bastianelli:

Do you have any like, tips for the participants to help them throughout this hunt?

Emily Patterson:

So the number one thing was to not split up with your team. Most people have, like, maybe four or five people on their puzzle team, and the temptation is to split up and like, you go solve these two puzzles, and you go solve these two puzzles, but it’s better if you stay together, because then everybody has all of the information, because sometimes some of the stuff comes back again in the later puzzles. Don’t overthink it. This happens a lot. Well, there was one year where there was a lot of QR code posters around downtown at one of the spots in the puzzle, and people were scanning the QR codes. You want to make sure you’re always stay within the puzzle. It’s not like trivia, where you need to know facts about the town, or you need to, like, know morse code or something like that, but it’s all contained within the puzzle. So no need to, like, find random items around, or know anything about Charlottesville.

Greg Ochsenschlager:

Don’t just follow people. Like, there’s a tendency, you know, there’s about 1000 people out there, so sometimes, you know, you’ll see a mass of people, kind of running in one direction because they figured out a clue, and then where to go next, you’re inclined to kind of run and follow them, because they’re like, well, 80 people must be right, you know, I’m going to follow these guys, but you don’t have enough information, so once you get there, you’re not going to know what to do, and you’re going to kind of gum up the works. So don’t follow people. Just solve the clues yourself and get yourself on the right track.

Emily Patterson:

I think a lot of the puzzles have to do with the information that’s presented one way, and you want to think about it from a different light, like there’s a lot of word play.

Greg Ochsenschlager:

You should come out to the Cville puzzle hunt, because you get to spend quality time outdoors with your friends. You get to explore the city. You get to improve your problem solving and lateral thinking.

Emily Patterson:

And its fun!

Greg Ochsenschlager:

And there’s prizes and bragging rights, and it’s fun and it’s fun. The first team that won created a WWF style wrestling belt that’s been passed down to the the winning team every year now.

Emily Patterson:

And the idea is to come out and have a good time with your friends and family. The puzzles are of differing difficulty level, so there should be something for everybody to solve. So even if you’re not in the run for like, the big prize, like, it’s still definitely a good day out.

Sara Bastianelli:

Come compete in the fifth annual puzzle hunt this Saturday at IX Art Park at 2:30pm. Arts This Week is supported by the UVA Arts Council in the Piedmont Virginia Community College. PVCC Arts presents a rich array of dance music, theater and visual arts programming. Learn more at pvcc.edu. For Arts This Week, I’m Sara Bastianelli. You’re listening to WTJU.