Cambridge University Scavenger Hunt

We absolutely love this!!!!!!!! This is the one to beat!

http://www.swfcabin.com/open/1244720725

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhb-PE8YEiM

And yes, we do realise it is 11 seconds – but it’s so good we just don’t care!

The judges are installed back in New Hall bar and have updated the scores with the points scored yesterday.

We are currently in the process of going through all of your email submissions and will add points as and when we award them.

If you have sent us a mixtape or are going to give us a mixtape please send us a tracklist and put your team name on the CD.

Due to The Eagle being packed, the judges have moved to The Bath House next door!

After a late surge of teams at New Hall, the judges are now on their way to The Eagle!

So far teams have managed to Toto one judge three times.

Keep the submissions coming in – the judges want to be ENTERTAINED!!!

Plus we have heard rumours of people dressed in pants on King’s Parade – the judges can’t wait to see the video/photographic evidence.

p.s. if anyone can find us a gluten free cheesecake (that they can give to us) they will earn themselves some bonus points

So far we have had two groups venture up the hill and show us their best efforts.

Check out the scores page to see up to date scoring.

New Hall bar does not know what has hit it!!!!

HTML is not being very nice to us. The New Hall wireless has choked us. AND we were late to meet the teams. But it’s now up and running!

Welcome to Scavenger Hunt 2009!

Unfortunately, we’ve been unable to secure a room at the Union so you guys will have to come up to New Hall for the next two days.

We’re in the bar – if you come up the hill and walk through the plodge, turn left at the end of the pigeonholes and the bar is the second door on the right. We’re downstairs!!

COME MEET US

WEAR TIES

GET YOUR LIST

Scavenger Hunt is back.

CUSH 2009 is happening WEDNESDAY 10TH to THURSDAY 11TH JUNE.

The List is back with a vengeance.

Interested?

Drop us an email with your team name, your team’s names (no more than five members) and your team photo.

You know you want to.

PS – this year, it’s brought to you by Boom Squad – our thanks to Chris, Martin, Abi and Irene for all their help – past, present and (most probably) future!

After 36 hours of exhaustive list-searching, cold ones, adjudication and associated stresses, the judges finally finished scoring all of the teams. The scores are by no means accurate, but barring any major errors, we’ll take them as final. The teams rank as follows:

1. The Boom Squad – 847
2. Chang-ed in Development – 709
3. Team Rofflecopter – 708
4. Cambridge Unnameables – 654
5. Steve and the Cake-O-Nauts – 621
6. Phase Space and the Wronskians – 510
7. Some Assembly Required – 484
8. Team Ridiculous – 386
9. Pretty David – 372
10. The Pirates – 332
11. Bazalgette and the Englings – 281
12. Boobies Make Me Smile – 276
13. The Famous Five – 192
14. Hatchets and Flies – 142

We then come to the medals, showcasing the finest talents of this year’s scavengers in every possible field:

• Gold Medal – The Boom Squad, well and truly deserved after they astounded us with an absurd amount of enthusiasm and effort on day 2. There was nothing they wouldn’t do to obtain those extra few points, despite being over 100 points ahead in the closing stages.

• Silver Medal – Chang-ed in Development, who started utterly confused over many of the items but learnt quick, weren’t afraid to embarass themselves and proved the power of international cooperation.
• Bronze Medal – Team Rofflecopter, undoubtedly the team with the finest hats, the finest moustaches and the finest MS Paint skills.

The awards, many continued from last year to save on creative expenditure are as follows:

• String Quartet Award for Musical Flair - Bazalgette and the Englings really have to win this after a sterling live performance in front of a fellow, the Grand Arcade and the judges themselves. Also notable were the Unnameables for their barbershop quartet and Boom Squad for ‘Eastenders: The Opera’.
• Colouring Pencils Award for Artistic Ability - Cambridge Unnameables for actually having a team member with impressive watercolour skills.

• Missing Nobel Prize Award for Scientific Endeavour - Team Rofflecopter were the only team to bring us a large hadron, made of quarks, well, the soft cheese Quark anyway.
• What Dignity? Award for Voluntary Humiliation - Cambridge Unnameables again really clinch this one by arriving at The Granta pub on the first evening and performing Jurassic Park with toys, live-action Pacman and their barbershop quartet in front of a captive bar-staff audience.
• Spin Doctor Award for Outrageous Lying - Mrs Brooks, mother of [T]Will[o] of Phase Space and the Wronskians, for his sick-note claiming that no end of disasters had hit their household. Also notable were Boobies Make Me Smile for saying that they’d be back on the 2nd day.
  
• Fabulous Finesse Award for Style - Pretty David for their excellent hats, willingness to dress up, Polish antics and generally being super fun!
• Absolutely Absurd Award for Most Bizarre Event – Chang-ed in Development had a team member who explained at length that her world record was having four nipples, although we only got shown two.
• Hello (Kitty) Celebrity Appearance Award – Angela Merkel quickly became the German chancellor who just couldn’t say no.. to biscuits.

Finally, a special mention to the judges themselves for surviving two days solid of absolutely mind-boggling activity. It was fun, but truly draining. Never again I say! We’ll be in contact with certain individuals who will mastermind future events!

We’re really very sorry that we’ve ended up taking so long to post a review and the final scores. Mayweek came and went, many of you left for home and then summer (and research of course) absorbed us all. In brief, here are some of the wonderful things we saw in the 2008 hunt.

Fingerpaintings of Angela Merkel (alas, missing) and Margaret Thatcher:

The finest ice sculpture:

A cruet the size, and shape, of a baseball bat and board games, one was giant and one was more, wtf?

A series of unfortunate events involving Sainsbury’s and underpants, some fine pieces of cinema warning of the dangers of pavement cracks, feeling age beyond our years upon presentation of a gameboy and someone younger than it and discovering that one of the team had a member who was an identical twin:

A host of notes from worried mothers (some more sincere than others), a distinct lack of comb-and-paper movie themes but some excellent stop motion videos and Spielberg films made with toys, or both. Sadly the best entry by far, a stop motion version of Indiana Jones made with Lego is missing from our collection!

Various forms of bread, henge, jigsaws and not what we expected in a cheese guillotine:

Some fine hats, and some finer moustaches:

A frighteningly real reptiloid (although of course, they are real), the glove stretcher and ACTION Benjamin Harrison:

Then we have the precious artifacts of yore:

A strange book club, the sad times and the happy times:

Not enough cocktails but thankfully plenty of cold ones, all that gift wrapping, disproof of bees, the knots, admitting that you were a card-carrying tory, the few pimped out punts, all the gifts, the weapons against horrible creatures, the hundreds of pictures, lies, puns, arguments..

Some astonishing works of pacman who apparently got hungry:

Interpretive dance, And of course, the endless supply of Rick Astley. To quote some unfortunate fellows:

“And I watched *the whole thing*. And it was nauseating.”

“What on earth was that? Rick Astley, whilst I recall his career, is of no particular interest to me.”

We’re still adding up the final scores, but there’s a pretty clear winner. Congratulations to The Boom Squad!

Final scores will follow soon, along with some awards, and more pictures and videos. If you have anything electronic which you haven’t sent us yet, please do, so we can share it with everyone.

We’d like to thank everyone who entered for making this the biggest and best scavenger hunt yet. Also for the beer, which was much appreciated.

P.S. Stop Rickrolling us now kplzthx

We’ve had some excellent video submissions. Here are a few highlights.

1984

Don’t Walk On The Cracks

Barbershop

Jurassic Park

Underpants on head montage

If you have video submissions that we’ve seen on your camera, please try to get them to us either by email, YouTube, or on a USB stick, so we can share the love.

After a flurry of activity, we’ve totalled the scores after day 1, not including those items still at the discretion of the judges or anything that arrived even just after midnight. Here’s the rundown:

1. Boobies Make Me Smile – 276
2. Team Rofflecopter – 221
3. Cambridge Unnameables – 217
4. Pretty David – 176
5. The Boom Squad – 173
6. Team Ridiculous – 155
7. Phase Space and the Wronskians – 147 (NB: Maximum Break!)
8. Steve and the Cake-O-Nauts – 134
9. Chang-ed in Development – 130
10. Some Assembly Required - 108
11. The Pirates – 71
12. The Famous Five – 23 (As yet unseen in person!)
13. Hatchets and Flies – 12
14. Aural Bizarre – 0 (Just ahead because we met Laura!)
15. Bazalgette and the Englings – 0 (As yet completely unseen!)

What an afternoon it’s been! Boobies Make Me Smile still hold the lead, with some scavenging of the highest standard, although they did get told off for filming in Sainsbury’s.

Also this afternoon, we’ve had reptiloids, a Moustache Party, Action Benjamin Harrison, some very sad looking emo rocks, and Angela Merkel has been at the biscuits.

The Scavenger Hunt is 3 hours old, and Boobies Make Me Smile have raced into an early lead. Just behind them though, are Team Rofflecopter and Team Ridiculous.

Thus far we’ve seen a fiendish rick-roll, some high-quality underpants/head/Sainsbury’s interaction, and more simple machines than you can shake a stick at.

Less than 15 hours to go until the 2008 Scavenger Hunt begins! The excitement is palpable.

If you don’t want to miss out on the fun, there’s still time to enter a team. Just send us a list of team members, a team name, and if possible, some sort of team photo/scribbled crayon drawing. Emails, as always, to cush@srcf.ucam.org.

For those who are taking part, the fun starts tomorrow (Wednesday) morning at 9am, outside Great St Mary’s. Wear a hat. We will be.

And, if you can’t make it to Great St Mary’s, don’t worry. The list will be online from 10am, and you can find out where and when to hand in items on the schedule.

TEAMS NEEDED BY THE END OF TUESDAY PLEASE!

This year’s Scavenger Hunt will begin at 9am on Wednesday 11th June and end at 9pm on Thursday the 12th of June. This year there will be PRIZES!

If you are interested, then take a look at the history page and the previous years’ lists. The rules of the game have been altered slightly so please take a few minutes to read them – we’ve also included some advice on how to impress the judges!

If you’d like to take part then get together a group of friends and email us. We’re inviting teams of up to five people to take part, although subsitutions will be considered. We’d appreciate a team name, a short description of yourselves and if possible a group photograph or photoshopped collage.

Thus, with our reviews complete, we come to the awards. Obviously, everyone who took part won in some way, we hope, by having fun, but there was a scoring system to reward those who showed true scavenging prowess. In addition, we’ve selected further categories in which to honour our teams and have mentioned once again the bonus points we awarded for impressive completion of a task or item.

Top Three

• Gold Medal - Team Internet, for actually scoring the most points. Their strength lay in indiscriminately spamming us with as many items as possible, bravo!
• Silver Medal - Would Sell Sex For Points, coming in a brave second.
• Bronze Medal - The Cambridge Unnameables, in a very close third.

Awards

• String Quartet Award for Musical Flair - The Cambridge Unnameables, for all their playing and singing
• Colouring Pencils Award for Artistic Ability - Trinity Blue, for their posters
• Missing Nobel Prize Award for Scientific Endeavour - Team Badger for both the ice in a sieve and their gunge
• What Dignity? Award for Voluntary Humiliation - Phil Bielby of Team Internet, for his frighteningly good makeover
• I Can Tell Because I’ve Seen a Few of Them in My Time Award for Photoshop Endeavours - Peterhouse Mafia, for their world leaders
• Spin Doctor Award for Outrageous Lying - Will Sell Sex For Points, because that wasn’t a piece of the Berlin Wall
• Copy Pasta Award for Stealing from the Internet - Team Internet, because of Phil
• Essay Due In Award for Creative Writing – Will Sell Sex For Points, for their essay on emo kids
• Fabulous Finesse Award for Style - The Cambridge Unnameables, for so many reasons

Bonus Points

• Number 7 Bus - Getting the Caius porter to ‘give’ them the college flag, getting a member of staff to meditate with them in Sainsbury’s
• Team Internet - Getting a picture of the blue plaque in the Mayor’s office and developing their own notation for Wuthering Heights in semaphore
• Will Sell Sex For Points - Finding a five-language dictionary, putting together a 12-person human pyramid
• The Cambridge Unnameables - Dressing as a vampire for the purpose of crossing bridges, the string quartet

With this team there is so much to say. Mary was the most prolific email correspondant by far and when we finally met her on Wednesday evening, everything we’d ascertained from her correspondance seemed to make sense. One thing’s for sure though, nearly everything they did from the list, they did with exceptional style!

Starting with examples of that style, they didn’t bring us ordinary pictures of bridges that vampires can cross, oh no, they had Aidan dress as a vampire to cross those bridges. Similarly when sending us photos of people whose names are geographical places, they made them look awesome. When it came to seceding from a political organisation, it just had to be done in black tie. As for the Owlbear, it took three of them to ‘make’ it, and was quite indescribably fantastic, mostly for involving Mary climbing onto someone’s shoulders, all wearing black and tree branches. Sadly there is no photo of that feat.

Moving to more miscellaeneous items, they planted a slightly skeletal tree, found someone in the university who owned a My Little Pony, brought us a cake with a toy soldier (apparently an extra team member) inside it and also managed to punt some tourists.

Other noteable scavenges included a The Simpsons monopoly set, more dressing up in order to save a copy of Le Monde and sending Chris a fax via Caius. On video we can show you Blaise defeating a fellow at Rock, Paper, Scissors and also crossing a new bridge across the Cam, constructed from the plank they had earlier fetched for us.

Perhaps part of their success was down to their unique access to the Institute of Theology and associated religious establisments. It meant that for copies of the same book in multiple langauges, we were shown Bibles in English, French, Russian, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac and Coptic. Then we have Mary pictured with both a bishop and a president of a seminary. Additionally, for whatever reason, the wife of a fellow offered her help to the team and when asked if she could make the presidential pasta portrait, gathered several different types of pasta and produced a marvellous George Washington. Finally in related matters, enjoy Chris munching on red M&Ms from the church collection plate they borrowed.

They were no strangers to attempting to bluff us into giving them points either. Much like WSSFP, they crossed the Rubicon fruit juice, although they did bring every flavour. They also told Chris’ fortune by observing the fall of doughnut sugar over a picture of Tiger Woods, then channelling Tiger’s innate divining powers to reveal my fate. After researching the Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky bridge and finding it to be a wormhole, they brought exactly that, from their garden in a jamjar of course. Their Carmen Sandiego was not a women dressed in red, alas, but it was a copy of the original game.

To finish our sparkling review of their performance we have their musical talent. It began with a medley of US TV themes (it made a change from Neighbours and Eastenders) on Wednesday morning. Then in the afternoon we were treated to a guitar-accompanied blues song in which they mostly woke up in the morning. Apparently the lyrics to their song about Jesus, naturally their favourite historical figure, were made up on the way to see us, but they flowed so well they could have had their own rock group. The piece de resistance however was mostly definitely the string quartet which comprised entirely of team members. We were both wowed and wooed. Inspiring stuff!

After meeting us to collect the list early on Tuesday morning, we didn’t see them again until Wednesday, apparently due to rowing. We’re glad they showed up eventually though! We’re missing pictures of many things so unfortunately descriptions will have to suffice.

Firstly, someone had some serious drawing talent. They produced a superbly coloured-in poster warning of the dangers of driving alone and also a combined protest banner/book banning asking us to ‘Say No to Pharmacology’. Their cakes were also quite delicious. Alex sang a lovely medley of TV themes, on her own, bless. She then recounted the many woes she had from the day’s rowing before. Their flag of Derbyshire was unparalleled, complete with flagpole and again, hand coloured. The team also brought us the only genuine (or as genuine as you can probably get) chunk of the Berlin wall – it had that ‘sold to tourists’ feel about it. Alex also told Chris’ fortune through palmistry, she’s clearly a very talented young lady. They combined 4 items in one with their gelatinous cube of jelly-ice containing a thimble, brought us a single statement with 8500 nectar points, the most we’ve ever seen, and had a pasta family tree that extended over three pages. Finally, their survey revealed that the public is torn between Superman and Batman if they were to fight. All in all, an impressive haul for just a morning’s work, well done!

An unexpectedly quiet team, they left it to the very last moment to bring us their wares. We’ll share with you their exquisite castle, an innovative wig made from pasta no less, and a strange game of scrabble featuring the word ‘Aiiiie’!

Whilst in comparison to the other teams they were small and found it difficult to spam us with quite so many minor items, they did bring us some interesting things. We loved their high quality glossy colour poster warning us about not sharing cars. Their chocolate cupcakes were perhaps the best we consumed (very moist, quite delicious). They seemed to pick up on our eating habits quickly as they attempted to woo us with doughnuts. One picture we did manage to take was of their gunge, apparently created with cornflour, water and turmeric, tasty stuff:

The second of our three overexcited and perhaps a little overzealous teams. So for starters, enjoy Claire posing with their dictionary that contains no less than 5 different languages. Then we have Lucy modelling the wig they made and their Famous Five collection (number 16 was in a different photo):

They were also quite good at videoing their achievments. Most of them, whilst embarassing, aren’t all that amazing. However we will share with you The Amazing Adventures of Owlman and Bilen’s party trick, a rather impressive backflip. Back in pictures, despite access to the Newnham art room, they preferred many of their creations on the floor. Here we have their superb confectionary castle, another Abraham Lincoln without a hat and our second favourite owlbear (it just looks so cute!):

Not in pictures for a while now. They managed to be the only team who gave us an interpretation of non-wind chimes that we awarded points to with their wind chimes decorated with hearts and love in big letters. Their favourite historical figure was the Duke of Wellington. Their attempt at discussing the difficult Abort, Retry or Fail question was truly inspiring though, giving us a brief analysis of the social phenomenon known as ‘emo kids’. They were the first team to come to us and cross the Rubicon by jumping over the well-known brand of tropical fruit juice. Bilen’s semaphore was a re-enactment of the famous Monty Python sketch from which we derived the task. Other items we sadly can’t share are their 12 pictures of a cuddly monkey in various situtations, their very original mappe of Cambridge and the team performing big fish, little fish, cardboard box in Cindies.

Back to pictures, we were astonished by one of their two pyramids, I bet you can’t work out which of these it was:

And to finish off their magnificent collection, we have their amusing gravestone(s), Bilen’s makeover and some extremely manly scrabble: