Operation Justice Unlimited: Balancing Act

Traffic was slow along 580, so Team Mystic Fish took the frontage road to Emeryville's Shorebird Park. A few people hopped out of the van and jogged out to the end of a short pier. Then they called up on the walkie-talkie: maybe the rest of the team should come out, this might be something interactive.

Beyond the end of the pier were some pilings. Each set of pilings had a work of strange art on it, but the closest piece of art looked new and un-weathered: it was a set of balance scales made of wood and pie-pans.

The nimble-fingered Brian Larson held out his walkie-talkie. Obviously, he'd decided to step off the pier onto the near set of pilings to get a close look at the scales, and was handing me his walkie-talkie. I took it from him. He seemed surprised--he hadn't meant to hand me his walkie-talkie; he wasn't going to step over to the scales.

Okay, then I would. I took off my backpack, stripped off my overshirt, put down my pencil, put down my clipboard, started to step up to the safety railing--and someone thought maybe we were supposed to look at how the scales were moving from here, without interfering with them. OK, I wouldn't step off the pier. Instead, I re-inserted myself into my clothes and equipment. Obviously, my eagerness had got in the way.

We watched the scales. Their motion did not seem to be determined by a microcontroller, but by the wind. We really should send someone over to take a closer look. Someone tried to grab away Brian's walkie-talkie, though he wasn't planning on stepping over. I guess there was just something about his stance that made folks think he was about to nimbly vault off the pier and onto the pilings, perhaps doing a back-flip along the way. Looking at the photos, it looks like he got one leg over the railing at one point.

We looked like the Keystone Cops--dithering about whether or not to step across, dithering about what else to do. In the end, we called up the Game Control hint line to say that we were contemplating a dangerous action, and to confirm that we should step across. They said, yes, that's why the previous clue solution was "MIND THE GAP". Oh yeah.

This looked like a job for a tall guy. I again wriggled out of my extraneous gear, quicker this time. I put a leg over the railing, another leg, and stepped out onto the pilings. Behind the scale, out of view of people on the pier, there was a bucket full of clues. I carefully extracted a clue and handed it back to the team on the pier.

Then we headed back to our van. No reason to hang out at the end of the pier and give other teams a hint about where to find the clue, after all. We set to work. Evening was approaching, and the air was cooling down. It was good solving weather, or maybe I just mean it was turning into a pleasant evening.

Somehow, Wesley looked at this and thought "fulcrum."

Dwight and Alexandra and Wesley and Eric hover over the ruler

The clue consisted of a ruler that had been adorned with a couple of stickers. There were some lists which purported to be equipment price lists. One was laid out in two columns; one was laid out in one column, with the first letter of each item in a large font size.

Wesley looked through the box full of crap we'd picked up at Ring Mountain. He had a flash of inspiration and pulled out the strangely-shaped reflector-thingy. He laid the ruler on top of it: if the ruler acted as a balance scale, the reflefctor-thingy would make a great fulcrum.

So we had a list of priced items in two columns. We had a balance scale. And a pre-clue had told us to "PLEASE BRING... COINS". Maybe for each pair of priced items on the two-column menu, we should put the appropriate amounts of change on each side of the ruler. Slide the ruler along the reflecto-fulcrum until it balanced. Look at where the fulcrum ended up on the ruler's inch scale. Read that as a dollar price, and find an item with that price on the one-column menu. Get the item's large-font letter. We had a plan. But the plan didn't work out.

If an item cost $1.02, which items should we put onto its side of the ruler?

• Four quarters and two pennies?
• A dollar bill and two pennies?
• A dollar coin and two pennies?
• Try four quarters and two pennies; if that didn't work try three quarters, two dimes, one nickel and two pennies; if that didn't work, try three quarters, two dimes, and seven pennies; if that didn't work try...

We started out with the four-quarters-per-dollar approach. We tried a few measurements, but got nonsense.

Other teams showed up. Someone from the Scoobies dropped by to chat with Alexandra. But when we were done people-watching, we were faced with a conundrum. Our four-quarters-per-dollar approach gave us garbage no matter how we tweaked it. We needed another approach.

Everyone on the team was pretty sure which approach to take; unfortunately, everyone was pretty sure about a different approach. Bickering ensued.

Finally, we called up Game Control. This was either the best hint or the worst hint we received all day--it was the worst because we already had the right answer in mind; it was the best because it stopped our bickering.

Once we knew what to put on each side of the balance scale, we quickly cranked out an answer. Soon we called Game Control and had our next destination: Hilltop Park in San Francisco's Hunter's Point neighborhood.

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