![[>];](../../../images/next.gif){kind=small}
| Location John Hinkel Park | Start Code: PATHS |
John Hinkel park is built on the side of a hill--it's that park with the amphitheater and the "NOT A THROUGH TREE" sign. I remembered it from past walks in the Berkeley hills, but didn't remember it being so rainy. That's probably because I was never so foolish as to walk out-of-doors when it was raining really hard. And yet, as the van pulled up, it was raining pretty hard. A couple of us piled out of the van and quick-stepped to the park, found someone from Taft who handed us a big piece of paper. We shielded the paper until we could get back to the van.
Back in the van, we unfolded the paper. It showed a sort of big circle, itself made up of little circles. A few circles had letters in them, spelling "PATHS". Ah, we were supposed to fill in lots of letters. There were little numbers written in some circles. They looked kind of like numbers printed in a crossword to let you know where to write words. Ah, we were looking for words to put in the ring. But where were the clues? Well, there were many paths in North Berkeley. Maybe PATHS was a nudge to look at our map. We looked for path names that would fit in the places suggested by the numbers--they didn't fit. Our PDA beeped at us, gave us a hint--and that hint suggested that we should still be in the park, walking around. We stepped out of the van. It had stopped raining.
John Hinkel park is built on the side of a hill. It has an amphitheater, but that's not all there is to it. There are paths going up the hill. Back at the amphitheater, not running from rain, looking around, we spotted a little sign on a fence post. It said "9. The 106th Element (10)" Ah, so these were the clues.
We probably lost a lot of time by not spotting that clue earlier. Then again, we probably stayed a lot drier. As I lumbered around the park, looking for more clues, I noticed that a lot of the other gamists present looked damp and grumpy. At one point, my feet slipped out from under me and I fell onto wet stone. I got up, collected myself, looked around. I was wet and hurting, but I still looked less wet and grumpy than folks who had been out in the heavy rain.
Soon the Mystic Fish gathered at the amphitheater to pool the clues that we'd found. We were able to figure out a few of them, but I think the PDA gave us a hint: all of the words we needed had all of the vowels. Oh, so that "inflammatory lung disease" was probably PNEUMONIA. Wait, wasn't Alexandra's mom in the hospital with pneumonia? I shook my head, went back to the easier thoughts of words containing all vowels. Dwight knew an impressive number of those.
We were still putting that hint to good use when the PDA gave us the next hint: We weren't just going to write the words in the outer ring of this puzzle. The lines in the middle of the puzzle suggested what to do next. Five lines led from the center, each to a four-way branch, each of which led to a two-way branch, each of which led to a letter. Given the all-vowels word "sEAbOrgIUm", that E meant "E is the second vowel, so take the 2nd path at the center 5-way junction" then the A meant "take the first path at the next junction" ...and so on. Each vowel-directed path led to a letter of the answer.
Soon we had our answer, and the location of the next clue: the vowel-rich Berkeley game store Eudemonia. Uh-oh, was the game over already? (It wasn't.)