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Travel

  1. (Read by a guest speaker, the information lady at Stetson. The first line, missing, was "You are at my desk")

  2. Name all 13 rest areas on the New Jersey turnpike.

  3. On the New Jersey turnpike, what does a sign that says "Z 1000" mean?

  4. The chairman of the New Jersey Turnpike Authority from 1970 to 1975 was a Williams College alumnus. Name him.

  5. If you are on Route 2/7, between the Williams Inn and the junction of Route 2 and 7 in South Williamstown, you cross two bridges. What year is engraved on both bridges?

  6. Who, exactly, may park in the lot in front of the Purple Pub?

  7. The Indian name for what is locally known as Webster Lake in Webster, Massachusetts is the tongue-twister "Lake Chartagognanchartagogchanbungachugamug." What does this translate to in English?

  8. How was the 1753 House constructed?

  9. What is the official name of the county in Massachusetts that includes Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket?

  10. If you are on Route 2, heading north towards North Adams, you pass a sign for Tasken Furniture. What is the catchy slogan of this company?

  11. Censors are having their way with the map of the United States. In maps of Arizona, Shithouse Mountain and Bullshit Canyon are officially known as "SH Mountain" and "BS Canyon." On the map of Oregon, what is Whorehouse Flats officially called?

  12. What is the name of the American Legion post in Williamstown?

  13. Exactly where are Sterling and Francine Clark buried?


(eyewitness account by Bill Tulloch)

The best hour bonus (or was it an action trivia?) in my experience in the contest must have been May '86, when I was a freshman playing in my entry. The bonus had two, unrelated parts. One part was to identify all the names of the rest stops on the Jersey Turnpike, which was relatively easy if you had a Jerseyite on your team. The other part was a little mysterious. It consisted of a woman's voice, unidentified, directing us to "start at my desk." We had to tape this audio portion, and this unidentified woman proceeded to give a series of complex directions (e.g., "go through the door on the right, go up two levels, take a left, go down two floors") and, at the end, asked, "where are you?" That was it. We figured out the woman was the information lady from Stetson (I apologize for not knowing her name) whom my entry referred to as "God" because she could tell you the exact directions to any location in that confusing building. We realized this was a sort of treasure hunt through Stetson, but only the final location was the treasure. An entrymate and I went to Stetson, thinking we might have to break in - which we didn't want to do - and found security had opened the building and was guarding it - that's when we knew we were right. In no time, several teams had sent representatives, and for the better part of 45 minutes we all wandered through the building, taking roughly the same course, it seemed. We all met up in a seminar room overlooking the main Stetson lobby, and information desk (our starting point). The directions said to go through the door on the left, which led to a balcony overlooking the lobby, and go down one floor. The only thing was, there were no steps. This large group decided at this point to pool resources, and two people retraced our steps from one point in the directions (which we all agreed had to be right) and found themselves right back where we were. Then someone had the brainstorm that, in every other instance of changing floors or levels, there was some reference to stairs. In this case, there was none. So we all went down another flight of stairs, and started from the point we would have been at if we'd jumped the one floor, and moved like a herd of buffalo through the building (time was really short at this point). We had a few more directions, and found ourselves in that same seminar room, but this time the last direction was to go through the far door, not the left one. This put us (or would have if the door had not been locked) on a balcony outside the building, facing Sawyer, and that was the answer. In terms of fun, it beat everything else in any contest.