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:

We think that this team might have been a little busy with other things on Day 2, but so long as they were having fun, we\’re happy. What we can say is that one of their team attempted to complete as many things on the list as he possibly could during one visit to the judges. This including completing the Skittles challenge in just over two minutes, wooing Martin with some outrageous flirting and causing considerable offence during all of this. He also had a good eye for page 3. The team also got up to their usual photoshop tricks:

Where to start with this team, they were truly prolific in bringing us as many things as they possibly could, often for us to reject their cunning, but still impressive enough to amount the score they did.

The first set of pictures here show a banana tree (very carbon neutral), their stolen poster warning us about a lack of car-sharing, planting a tree from an apple seed and their scout leader, in uniform:

Moving on to sweeter things. Whilst superb preparation went into Richard\’s attempt at the Skittles challenge, it didn\’t help. Then there\’s their confectionary castle, complete with a team member \’inside\’ it. The cupcakes were also delicious.

Onto more serious pursuits now. Somehow, they managed to get a Caius porter (perhaps the same one responsible for the flag incident on Day 1) to officially ban an obscure sci-fi book from the lodge. They also burnt a book and as an attempt to revolutionise the fashion industry, made quite a nice pun on the item in question by sending us an electronic version of the novel Dune, compressed using zip. We\’ll also share their amusing leaflet, Animals in Architecture, Phillip with the college domestic bursar and Richard punting some tourists:

Further achievements included completing the cryptic crossword from Wednesday\’s Telegraph, singing us a fine song about Henry VII and beating Dr E. Anderson at Rock, Paper, Scissors (only after losing however). They did a fine job of faking a string quartet too, with an excellent piece of artwork depicting the quartet and made of string. Their pasta president was Lincoln, without a hat!

Then there was the fascist porn, oh how we regretted setting that challenge. I won\’t link to it for obvious reasons, but it met the requirements and at least for the first few seconds was amusing. More pictures now: we have the four bankers in a technical orgy and the two different types of pyramid we asked for:

And we\’re not finished there. We were pleased they brought some microfiche from Caius library. Their \’Abort, Retry or Fail\’ flow chart could have been better, but they redeemed themselves with a mathematical proof that their dad(s) could beat up our dad(s). We were genuinely impressed with Richard\’s swift mastery of semaphore and subsequent cover verison of \’Wuthering Heights\’ by Kate Bush. Obviously whilst he was learning that, the girls had been studying too, showing off their Esperanto skills in a short skit for us. Phil was probably busy being made over, and doesn\’t he look lovely:

Nearly there now. It\’s worth noting that they faxed Chris at work (and he actually received it, perhaps because it sounded suitably meta-business-speak). Their ye olde mappe featured owlbears, shrubbery and apparently \’here be flagones\’ down by the millpond. Their model volcano, made from fudge, bicarbonate of soda and vinegar, did the job, even if it did smell quite revolting. Finally, we\’ll leave you with their labyrinth and one of the results from their survey, part of which we can bring you in all its glory here.

36 hours later, it\’s all over. Sadly, due to the problems Cambridge has been experiencing with internet connectivity, we\’re not in a position to announce a winner as yet. Expect a result some time in the next day or so, as we slowly wade through the immense backlog of email

On behalf of myself and the rest of the judges, I\’d like to extend our thanks to everyone who took part, and made this year\’s Scavenger Hunt so enjoyable.

Martin