Elementary School of Fish: Q-Zar

As we walked a block to Q-Zar. Just behind us was Team Snood. Hey, wasn't that Teresa Torres, captain of Team Orange Crush? Apparently she was playing with Team Snood this game. She seemed to be in the middle of an anti-competitive rant: "...so nobody else needs to worry about coming in last place. Because that's going to be us. No-one else worry about it." I was tempted to make things competitive by boasting that Team Mystic Fish could come in last-er than Team Snood any day of the week. But I thought that she might kick me in the shins so I just grinned.

At the arcade, we were supposed to play Q-Zar, but they weren't quite ready for us. During the game, the invisible ink on our arms was going to be visible. Someone from another team knew that this was UV ink, and pointed us at a UV light over by some air hockey tables. The letters on my arm were JO. We exchanged letters with someone on another team: LM.

The mean-looking guys from the park were now at the arcade. They seemed angry about something. I was glad that there were plenty of gamists around.

Eventually, the Q-Zar marshal ushered a few teams into a briefing area. Dwight sat out this puzzle, finishing off the "pouch" puzzle on a bench. But Brian and I went in.

In this activity, we would be graded on two ways: glorious action at Q-Zar, and our ability to answer a puzzle whose contents would become clear if we could spot enough letter-pairs on peoples' arms. Game teams would be split up for Q-Zar. Brian was on the red team, I was on the green team. Each team, red and green was made up of people from a few Game teams.

In the green assembly area, Red Byer (captain of Team Snood) announced what his letter-pair was. A few other people did, too, myself included. I'm not sure if Red did that in a spirit of keeping things friendly, or if he just wanted to make sure that his Q-Zar team-mates were concentrating on guns rather than UV letters.

Q-Zar itself was not much fun. It was nice to find this out in a little excursion from a game. I'd always been curious to try laser tag, and it was good to find out I didn't like it this way--instead of planning a day around it.

After the game, Brian and I reported our letters. JO VI LM CH MI. Somehow Dwight looked at that and saw "MIla JOvaviCH fiLM". Ah, we were supposed to name a Milla Jovavich film. She was the leading lady in the Fifth Element. The directions for this activity had mentioned that there was an especially appropriate answer to this puzzle worth extra points. Did we know any other Jovavich films? On my trusty laptop, I had downloaded the IMdb entry for... Gary Oldman the actor who'd played Zorg. I hadn't downloaded a list of Milla Jovavich films, though. Dang. We found Ian Tullis of Taft on a Raft, reported our Q-Zar scores, and gave our answer: "The Fifth Element". Not the best answer possible, but good enough for some credit.

Then we went back outside to visit Darcy and tell her we were ready for the next puzzle.

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