Just as the evening was getting underway, Gentle Tongue-Tongue announced that secreted somewhere deep within their contest was a HIDDEN BONUS. A single-sheet Hidden Bonus page was handed out at 12:00 midnight. It was a confusing melange of sentences, phrases, individual words, empty boxes, stick-figure semaphore men, partial images, and three tiny photos of a very happy Rich Flynn. No explanation was offered. More than eight hours later, the serpentine mystery of the Hidden Bonus was revealed at last, by Sandeep Bhatt and Brian Wecht.
Normally we don't bother with precise transcripts on this archive, but this deserves to be unveiled to you as it was to all the teams listening to WCFM on Saturday morning, May 17th, 1997. Prepare to boggle.
Sandeep Bhatt: I just want to talk about the Hidden Bonus: There WAS one! I mean, really, we, we meant it. First of all, if you READ the hidden bonus sheet when you came down, it said, "For an easy point, tell the man in the white leisure suit that Manimal would have made a good Pope."
Brian Wecht: It's SO true.
SB: It's there-- you should have said it-- not everybody did. Some people got points.
BW: How many people said that?
SB: Ah.....I don't know-- four, maybe five teams?
BW: How weak. We still love you, though.
SB: So, okay, that was the easy given point. Well, after the first Hour went out, nothing relevant. When Conspiracy came by, you should have noticed that the symbol on the bottom left (of the Hidden Bonus) is the symbol on the first page of the Conspiracy Bonus.
BW: The symbol of....?
Voice: The Freemasons. Let's give it up for the Freemasons!
(applause and general whooping)
SB: So, if you had matched it up, the boxes you see on the Hidden Bonus would have matched up with "Call Pus Line, ask"..... "for"..... "RFK's assassin."
BW: Who as everyone knows, is Richard Flynn.
SB: Or Sirhan Sirhan, as he is known to his family. And if you then called for "Sirhan Sirhan," we would have given you a code word to give to the Man in Black. I think you've all seen the Man in Black wandering around the station.
Voice: Man in Black! (more applause)
SB: He would have given you a little piece of paper that would have said, "Take the painting that doesn't belong in the Arts Bonus, turn it into one that does, and bring it to Sandeep." Well, you know, people should have noticed "1850-1997"..... "Mona Lisa" doesn't belong. And turned it into that famous Duchamp with the mustache and the goatee and brought it down to me.
SB: Brought it down to me, and I'd have given you a little piece of paper with five numbers on it. And those numbers relate to the words that are on, again, the Hidden Bonus page. They would have spelled out, "THESE.... CRETANS.... WE.... RISEN.... CORE," and if you fix up the blanks on that, you would have gotten "THE SECRET ANSWER IS ENCORE."
SB: Well, that was the end of Part One.
(much laughter)
SB: At the beginning of Part Two, which more people seemed to catch, from 4:30 to 4:55, we DID mention "Three Guys Sitting Around a Keg," and we told you, "Hey, you were missing a prop." You came down here and told me.... you picked up the dime, the list of things to do, and the Ewok menu. Well, the three items you were supposed to order for dinner from the Ewok menu matched up to 6, 14, 4, my phone number. If you'd called my answering machine, you would have heard, "Congratulations, you're almost there. Go down and copy your tongue in Baxter Lounge."
BW: Notice the "tongue" part.
SB: Very prominently placed. Finally, if you'd gone down and copied your tongue, out of the copier would have come a piece of paper with your tongue, of course, and on the back of the piece of paper, "Team Name" and "What is the secret answer?"
SB: Well, we're not going to embarrass people by saying how many people got this, or how far people got. But you might want to say, "Hey, this was impossible." That's why I'd like to say, "Salmon Mousse-- you RULE."
BW: Yeaaaahhhhh.
(applause begins)
SB: By FIVE AM, you had everything done. SEVEN POINTS on the Hidden Bonus.
(general acclamation)
POSTSCRIPT: Dan Aramini, the member of Salmon Mousse who more or less singlehandedly tackled and conquered the Hidden Bonus, later said of his triumph, "Once I realized that I had to put my tongue on a Xerox machine, I REALLY wanted to be the first one down there."
