Bang 7: Earl's Peers

Team Fishstick Mess headed out into the business park. It was Sunday. It was late on a Sunday. And it was a business park. Thus, there were no people other than us. It was spooky.

We reached a spot and hunted in vain for clues or other teams. We re-checked the map. We were at the wrong intersection. Argh. All of these buildings, all of these trees, they all looked so similar. We were in a maze of straight streets, all the same.

But then we emerged into a parking lot with plenty of people sitting around. Close by, David found an envelope. Inside were some transparent printed sheets. There was printing on it in many colors. There were words, squiggles, wedges, lines, dots: information.

We laid it on top of Earl's Peers. A message pointed at Milhouse saying "his first name, without the last letter". And, more helpfully, a message under the title said "Which one is the odd one out?" Garfield was the odd one out. We'd assumed that Garfield was the "G" in Warren G. Harding, before we'd realized that the point of this puzzle was to look for an odd man out. (It turns out that Warren G. Harding's middle name was Gamaliel. I guess he was an elf recently escaped from Middle-Earth or something.)

Thanks to Alexandra's and David's groundwork, we had the answer almost immediately. But I'm sure that they were thinking about all the time they'd spent looking at the presidents' first names, ordinal numbers, trying to get a message out of them. They could have been working on Strongbadian mini-puzzles, which would have been more fun and more productive. I looked to see if steam came out of their ears, but didn't see any.

We found "Garfield" on the game board, found our next position on the map.

There was a sad little creek contained in a concrete channel. There was a bike trail along that creek. We set out along it towards the next clue site.

Poke Her Face

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