The World's Largest Scavenger Hunt Returns

mresolver writes "University of Chicago students have once again emerged from the library after a long winter to participate in the world's largest scavenger hunt. The multiple day event is famous for the working breeder reactor that students managed to build during the 1999 hunt. This year, the official list (PDF) includes a superconductor, working wood refrigerator, hot air balloon made to Montgolfier specifications, one-way funhouse mirror, and a walk-in Kaleidoscope."

Spoilers

[Anonymous Coward]

The goal this time is to build a working Atari 2600 from everyday household objects.

Re:Spoilers

[mallardtheduck]

That should be pretty easy... an Atari 2600 is an everyday household item, right?

Re:Spoilers

[kammat]

Where does one find faux wood grain paneling these days, though?

Re:Spoilers

[krakelohm]

Visit any trailerpark in America.

MacGyver

[antdude]

MacGyver could easily do this one.

Re:MacGyver

[grammar fascist]

MacGyver could easily do this one.

Yes, gentlemen, this is my self-assembled Atari 2600, made from nothing but old hosiery, chewing gum, a banana peel, and a few locks from my very own mullet!

What?

[Umbral Blot]

What, no human organs? How boring.

Re:What?

[nerdguy0]

They have a book bound in human skin (#143). Skin is an organ, right?

Re:What?

[hackstraw]

Skin is an organ, right?

Yup, the biggest one we have.

Aaah hahaha!

[Crizp]

Why, oh why did I just waste my mod points on someone insightful!

Re:What?

[ZecretZquirrel]

Uhhh, speak for yourself there, Mr. "straw".

I know where the book bound in skin is

[technoextreme]

Should I say it? I'll be dammed if someone didn't take the same tours that I did. It's sort of interesting to go on two different tours and have them both point out a library that has a book bound in skin. It's not even like there were 1000 other things that happened in this place that weren't more interesting. Too bad it's not a public library and you have to pay a yearly fee to use it. Pretty interesting story too. A psycho killer wrote a book and read it. Realizing at how deranged he was he had his s

Skin bound books are pretty common????

[technoextreme]

http://www.boston.com/news/local/rhode_island/arti cles/2006/01/07/some_of_nations_best_libraries_hav e_books_bound_in_human_skin/ [boston.com]
Ill be dammed. Skin bound books are everywhere. The one specifically that I was thinking of was the one mentioned on the second page.

Re:Skin bound books are pretty common????

[grammar fascist]

From the article:

The Harvard Law School Library bought its copy of a 1605 practice manual for Spanish lawyers decades ago, for $42.50 from an antiquarian books dealer in New Orleans.

A 1605 practice manual for Spanish lawyers bound in human skin is oddly fitting. In fact, now that I think about it, why aren't all law books bound in human skin?

Re:What?

[Errtu76]

Not just an organ, but the biggest one in a human.

Re:What?

[kalirion]

Hmm, so if in previous hunts they've been building some of the items themselves....

The 2006 first annual Slashdot scavenger hunt

[Centurix]

1. 2 lines of source code from Duke Nukem Forever
2. DNA From a) Bill Gates b) Linus Torvalds c) Larry Ellison
3. 1 Site which can withstand a force 10 slashdot effect (Not a search engine)
4. Someone who can actually write IAAL
5. Used items belonging to the goatse man
6. 3 pounds of lime green duct tape
7. 1 pound of Sillier Putty (tm)
8. 1 Signed Microsoft UAT
9. A travelling salesman who understands non-deterministic polynomial time
10. A girlfriend

Re:The 2006 first annual Slashdot scavenger hunt

[Anonymous Coward]

Well the first nine should be fairly easy in comparison.

Re:The 2006 first annual Slashdot scavenger hunt

[Umbral Blot]

Hm 4 / 10 so far.

Re:The 2006 first annual Slashdot scavenger hunt

[StarkRG]

I just hope you don't have goatse's traffic cones...

the list....

[leuk_he]

well the list already contains.

"23 In Soviet Russia, Scav hunts you! Get the autograph of the One and Only. What a country! [19861951
points]"

so /. is covered.

I got #1

[TheEternalVortex]

I give you as many as 5 lines: int main() { throw NotImplementedException(); return 0; }

Re:I got #1

[VGPowerlord]

give you as many as 5 lines: int main() { throw NotImplementedException(); return 0; }

Uh oh, 3D Realms is going to sue you for posting the game's entire source code!

no points.

[leuk_he]

That is one line... you forgot the <BR> tags.
I could point some other errors. Like that it might be WinMain, that is might be written in C and throw does not work there. the program uses "exit" instead of return. or it returns a error exit code instead of 0 (0 is assumed "ok" mostly for unix programs) .

safer would have been:
{
}

But then there is still point 10 in the list. That is the real hard part.

Re:The 2006 first annual Slashdot scavenger hunt

[Anonymous Coward]

1)
10 PRINT "I OWNZ JOO!"
20 GOTO 10
2) *dons ninja suit*
3) cnn.com?
5) How many points is this worth?
6) There is a lime green type of nuclear duct tape. I have some lying around somewhere....
10) C'mon! These entries are supposed to be possible!

Re:The 2006 first annual Slashdot scavenger hunt

[Captain Perspicuous]

11. Natalie Portman naked and petrified in hot grits

Re:The 2006 first annual Slashdot scavenger hunt

[CortoMaltese]

1. 2 lines of source code from Duke Nukem Forever

/* Duke Nukem Forever
Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 3D Realms */

Re:The 2006 first annual Slashdot scavenger hunt

[gendusoa]

Shouldn't that be: /* Duke Nukem Forever
Copyright (C) 1997-2006 3D Realms */

They've had plenty of time to revise it...

Re:The 2006 first annual Slashdot scavenger hunt

[Hillgiant]

/*drunk. fix later*/

Re:The 2006 first annual Slashdot scavenger hunt

[andersa]

1. 2 lines of source code from Duke Nukem Forever

void main(void)
{}

Lets not forget a few....

[CFD339]

Cmon, we can do better than that...

B1. Ponies!
B2. Desktop Cold Fusion, the energy of the Future!
B3. Gray Goo.
B4. Profit!
B5. AI Based dust collecting overloards.
B6. A working automobile metaphore.
B7. An actual first post.
B8. An editor who actually reads the articles before posting them.

Re:The 2006 first annual Slashdot scavenger hunt

[fuzza]

4. Someone who can actually write IAAL

Will this guy [slashdot.org] do? :)

Re:The 2006 first annual Slashdot scavenger hunt

[Amouth]

can i subistute girlfriend with wife?

Re:The 2006 first annual Slashdot scavenger hunt

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if she doesn't mind.

Re:The 2006 first annual Slashdot scavenger hunt

[Loligo]

> 4. Someone who can actually write IAAL

We have plenty of those, but due to their career choice, they start out with massively negative karma.

They're here, they're just all below your threshold.

How dare they!

[AuMatar]

Ok, most of this list was harmless fun. But how dare they violate the valuable IP of patent #6,368,227 [uspto.gov]? Don't bother letting these hardened criminals rot in jail- just shoot them for their crimes against humanity.

Re:How dare they!

[WalterGR]

But how dare they violate the valuable IP of patent #6,368,227? Don't bother letting these hardened criminals rot in jail- just shoot them for their crimes against humanity.

In reference to the patent you mention, this text is from a New Scientist article on the patent: [newscientist.com]

A five-year-old kid from Minnesota has patented a way of swinging on a child's swing...

Peter Olson[, his father,] told New Scientist: "I had told him that if he invented something he could file a patent." His son had not seen sideways s

Re:How dare they!

[Atzanteol]

But that's coo, Slashdot. Mock away. That's what you do best.

Soooo, a patent lawyer making a mokery of the patent system isn't worthy of our ire simply because a child was involved?

Re:How dare they!

[drinkypoo]

He did it deliberately to show his child how the patent system worked, and it demonstrated that the patent system is a mockery. I don't think he has any plans to sue anyone and stop them from swinging sideways.

Re:How dare they!

[Kjellander]

Ok, most of this list was harmless fun. But how dare they violate the valuable IP of patent #6,368,227? Don't bother letting these hardened criminals rot in jail- just shoot them for their crimes against humanity.

I have prior art to this patent [uspto.gov] dating back to 1982 or before that.

We used this mode of swinging in the two swings made of rubber tires hanging next to each other outside of this house [eniro.se], effectively making them into bumper cars. The object was to swing into the other guy until he couldn't take it a

Re:How dare they!

[kansas1051]

There is actually a interesting history behind that patent. It was subject to a "director" ordered reexamination, which means that the USPTO itself thought the patent was so bad that it had to be withdrawn and prosecuted again. Director ordered reexaminations are incredibly rare, particularly when there isn't a lot of money at stake.

As the patented swinging method had been long known in the art, the USPTO invalidated all claims of the patent (as it should have the first time around), rendering it unenforceable. Because a patent with no claims is worthless, its owner allowed it to expire on 5/10/2006 by nonpayment of issue fees.

Re:FYI: Patent 6368227

[D'Eyncourt]

Based on the old photos, I think you should challenge the patent instead.

Aluminum tubes being used!

[Phoinix]

If they used "Aluminum Tubes", then they may qualify for a free bonus WMD point/strike from GW...

Moving Violations Required?

[penguinland]

From the rules on how to conduct the road trip:

[The driver] may not have received no moving violations or convictions or court-ordered supervision.

I really hope that's a typo... I'm not sure how easy it would be to find someone with a prior conviction to send on the road trip.

Re:Moving Violations Required?

[z0idberg]

I'm not sure how easy it would be to find someone with a prior conviction to send on the road trip.

Yeah, everything else on the list should be a piece of cake, but where the hell are you going to find someone thats had a moving violation?!

Participation points

[SirWraith]

So i'm going to visit my friend at U of C this weekend, and she says, "oh, this was a good week to come, you will get to participate in the scav hunt." obviously, i figure, "hmm, this would be fun for a short while." Then... i see this article. "damn, this is gonna be hard." but compared to Centurix's list up there, this is a walk in the park. sure anyone can find things like "2. DNA From a) Bill Gates b) Linus Torvalds c) Larry Ellison" and "9. A travelling salesman who understands non-deterministic polynomial time" but if i was able to find something like "10. A girlfriend" do you really think i would be writing this at 4:56, come on, at least make it a realistic list.

Some advice

[Mostly a lurker]

In the future, before insulting someone else's intelligence, ensure that you understand the post you are criticising. He clearly stated that the real list was bad enough, but at least not as hard as the spoof list.

Re:Participation points

[Xugumad]

> but if i was able to find something like "10. A girlfriend"

Who says it has to be your girlfriend. You're thinking too literally!

Worlds largest egh ?

[Anonymous Coward]

of course the http://www.geocaching.com/ [geocaching.com] concept is smallfry, but no, a school in USA has the biggest right ?

this is like the "World Series" where the winners are "World Baseball Champions" when only teams from USA play, most American kids dont even know what the world is [aljazeera.com].

Re:Worlds largest egh ?

[mpaulsen]

this is like the "World Series" where the winners are "World Baseball Champions" when only teams from USA play, most American kids dont even know what the world is.

It is also like the "Almost correct example using MLB" where the teams are "only from USA" when some people don't even know where Toronto [wikipedia.org] is.

hth, hand

Re:Worlds largest egh ?

[Vann_v2]

Geocaching isn't really a scavenger hunt, it's more of a treasure hunt. In any event, it's not like other people in other countries are prevented from having their own scavenger hunts -- certainly not in the same way that, say, a Japanese baseball team is prevented from playing in the MLB.

You're just looking for something to complain about. Big ol' whiner.

Re:Worlds largest egh ?

[Red Flayer]

Well, the geocaching exercise is not a scavenger hunt.

And it's not like the UoChi organizers decreed that theirs is the world's biggest scavenger hunt. Even if they did, I'm sure they wouldn't have a problem with not calling it that should someone prove another scavenger hunt to be larger.

Sure, there's some hubris involved with calling the MLB championship the World Series, but when the Series was initiated, it was without a doubt the world championship by default.

Instead of getting your panties all

F***ing

[floki]

11. That Fucking road sign.

Poor people of Fucking, Austria (Europe) [wikipedia.org]. As if they didn't have enough tourists stealing their sign. At least it has become harder to steal now:

... In August 2005 the road signs were replaced with theft-proof signs welded to steel and secured in cement to make the signs harder to take. ...

Re:F***ing

[David Horn]

Apparently it was only us Brits that were stealing them. No one else found it funny.

*sniggers*

NOTICE: Item #43 Replaced to Redesign Slashdot

[digitaldc]

This just in: Item #43 'Drawing a perfect circle freehand' has been replaced with 'Redesigning Slashdot.com' instead.
It's a one-shot deal and no further information is available about this update.

Can't believe this hasn't been done

[goldaryn]

...

11. Weapons of Mass Destruction
12. A copy of "Where's Waldo? Special Osama Edition"
12. George Bush's rear end
12a. Tony Blair's puckered lips

g.

Re:Can't believe this hasn't been done

[cynical kane]

It hasn't been done because it's not funny.

Re:Can't believe this hasn't been done

[tuanjim_2001]

11. Weapons of Mass Destruction
12. A copy of "Where's Waldo? Special Osama Edition"
12. George Bush's rear end
12a. Tony Blair's puckered lips

Looks like somone needs to check their math again.

Re:Can't believe this hasn't been done

[renjipanicker]

>> 12. George Bush's rear end
>> 12a. Tony Blair's puckered lips

Why 12 and 12a? Because the two items are pretty much fused together?

Re:Can't believe this hasn't been done

[freakmn]

>>>12. A copy of "Where's Waldo? Special Osama Edition"
>>>12a. Tony Blair's puckered lips

Why would Tony Blair be kissing Waldo? That's just weird!

Found Itemd that I think is against the rules...

[Kiffer]

153. Sending Flora to your mother on Mother's Day is so played out. This year, she wants fauna. [4 points] ...
183. A pet bee on a string. Do not conflate with Item #228. [3 points]

don't the rules state that you cant have any animals...?

Rule 11.
Items. Most items remain the property of the team that secured it except for the items that explicitly call for surrender. Furthermore, no items should use any living, non-human animals|think S.P.C.A.
guidelines.

I guess you could give her a dead animal... but the bee w

Re:Found Itemd that I think is against the rules..

[Kiffer]

225. A live eyelash mite, to be removed from a team member on Justice Sunday and displayed under a microscope. [15 points]

thats 3 items that are against the rules...

Re:Found Itemd that I think is against the rules..

[cmcfaul]

The key is the line, "Think S.P.C.A guidelines." I don't know the guidlines all that well, but my understanding is that bees are not considered worth protecting. At any rate, the enforcement of the list rules is done by our ORCSA advisor, who checks the List to make sure we're not doing anything dangerous/illegal. I'm not sure where exactly they would draw the line, but it appears to be somewhere between insects and mammals.

OTOH, the story I've heard from judges older than myself is that the original source

Re:Found Itemd that I think is against the rules..

[Kadin2048]

183. A pet bee on a string. Do not conflate with Item #228. [3 points]

Nowhere in that line does it say "live pet bee on a string". It could easily be a dead bee on a string. I don't think that a "pet" necessarily implies that the object is alive: think pet rock, etc.

So, find a dead bee, some string, and some Krazy Glue. You've got your pet bee on a string. Macabre? Maybe, but not as much as the book bound in human skin...

Re:Found Itemd that I think is against the rules..

[pomakis]

Nowhere in that line does it say "live pet bee on a string". It could easily be a dead bee on a string. I don't think that a "pet" necessarily implies that the object is alive: think pet rock, etc.

Actually, according to rule #11 in their official rules [uchicago.edu], "no items should use any living, non-human animals". So I guess a deceased bee (who must ipso-facto be not a bee) is the only option.

Half a bee, philosophically...

[Kadin2048]

Half a bee, philosophically, must, ipso facto, half not be.

But half the bee
has got to be,
vis a vis
its entity - do you see?

But can a bee
be said to be
or not to be
an entire bee
when half the bee
is not a bee
due to some ancient injury?

Singing...

La dee dee, 1 2 3,
Eric the half a bee.
A B C D E F G,
Eric the half a bee.

Is this retched demi-bee,
half asleep upon my knee,
some freak from a menagerie?
No! It's Eric the half a bee.

Fiddle dee dum,
Fiddle dee dee,
Eric the half bee.

Ho ho ho,
Tee hee hee,
Eric the half a bee.

I lov

Don't Just Read The Article, See The Movie!

[Phat_Tony]

The 2002 Scavenger Hunt was documented and made into a film, The Hunt [imdb.com]. I bought a copy, and I enjoyed it. Find out more, and/or buy a copy, here [periphrastic.com].

Or if you don't want to pay the money, why not request that Netflix carry it [netflix.com]. Or your local library.

Biggest Scavenged Item Ever

[shking]

Every fall, the freshman engineering class at Queen's University [queensu.ca] is sent on a scavenger hunt. Over the years, in addition to thunder mugs many "large" items were turned in, but even a the great lakes lake freighter that someone moored near campus isn't the biggest. The greatest bit of scavenge ever turned in was the United States of America. Apparently one of the frosh had a parent with connections to the Carter administration and they got the White House to send a document handing over the USA for one ho

Amulet of Yendor.

[atomic-penguin]

From the list:

7._________ The Amulet of Yendor. [ 1 point ]

Oh, come on, that has got to be worth at least 1,000,000 Zorkmids!