Leila Sales

Last night I ate dinner with a college friend and went to see my old college improv group, Off-Off campus. Then it was back to Scavving!

I stopped by Scav Prom for about twenty minutes. Everyone looked gorgeous and we danced to Top 40 songs. The DJ was some random dude who did not seem to know the importance of Scav Hunt theme songs of yore. I did not hear “If the Robots Win, We’ll Have to Listen to Techno.” But that’s okay; that’s not his fault. I danced anyway.

After Scav Prom, seven of us judges piled into Judge Nick and Judge Kat’s min-van and drove all the way to the north side for private room karaoke. Private room karaoke is not a Scav Hunt item. It is just fun.

After a close-to-full night’s sleep, I woke up this morning for Scav Olympics.

It’s Scav Olympics, and everyone we’ve invited is here! Also Zoidberg! Zoidberg scuttling competition.
Zoidbergs will scuttle sideways, with their knees in constant contact with their elbows, from Hull Gate
to Harper. Also, you’re not Zoidberg unless you have a rubber glove somehow attached to your face.
Wooopwoopwoopwoop!

This was a race where Scavvies had to pretend to be a crab-like character from Futurama. It was basically like a gym class exercise for building thigh muscle, except wearing a crab costume.

WWII homecoming kiss marathon. Last couple standing with lips locked and both bodies at 45 degrees wins!

This was WAY MORE INTENSE than I had anticipated. The winning couple kissed for 12 minutes. By the end of it, every man’s arms were shaking from holding their partners upright, and the girls who were angled back are probably going to have spinal problems for the rest of their lives. Most of them collapsed to the ground once they gave up kissing. I feel like competing in this contest could single-handedly cure you of your desire to ever kiss anyone ever again.

A reverse dog sled race. Dog must remain on sled solely though its own free will. Sleds that lose their
dogs will be disqualified.

There was only one dog that stayed in her sled the whole way across the lawn, so she won automatically. But all the dogs were still winners, in that they’re all adorable.

Fixed gear bike race. (BYO fixie and helmet.)

This was a backward bike race. It was basically impossible.

“There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.” – Sir Winston
Churchill. Though ye be both horse and man, let us mark your skill in the highest echelon of the
equestrian arts: dressage. Please bring one two-man horse ready to demonstrate equine excellence
with a 2-minute choreographed entry for the Scav Olympics Grand Prix Freestyle to Music. No rider
is necessary, but please ensure that your horse comes dressed in the proper turnout: draped in a brown
sheet with a mangy yarn mane and big horse-sized googly eyes.

I love dressage! And horses! And people dressed up as horses and performing choreographed dances! One of them danced to “Bring on the Dancing Horses,” and I was like, “Well, that sounds about right.”

Around this time Judge Jess and Judge Conor showed up with their two-year-old daughter, a.ka. the Judge Baby. I had never met her before (though I did band together all the judges to buy her roughly fifty picture books when she was born). She was so great.

After Scav Olympics, Judge Will and I set up the indoor string maze.

So you’re going to be Vincent Cassel, and we’re going to be doing that scene in Ocean’s 12, only instead of getting through a laser field, you’re going to need to get through a maze of string. At 2:00 p.m. on Saturday in the McCormick Tribune Lounge, show us what you’ve got. [12 points, plus up to 3 extra
points for style]

It took close to half an hour to construct the string maze, but it wound up looking SO GOOD. My mom used to make smaller string mazes for me on our screened-in porch when I was a kid, so that’s how I got the idea.

This, however, was the most challenging and extensive string maze I have ever seen or made. The fastest Scavvy made it through in 21 seconds, and the slowest one took more than a minute, but we stressed to them that it was about style and creativity more than speed– not least because too much speed would have resulted in a mistake that would have pulled the entire string maze down.

I LOVE how this item went. Every Scavvy found a different route through the maze; no two were exactly alike. Some just walked and crawled, some jumped and flipped. At least three of the competitors showed off their dance or gymnastics training. I loved watching this item. All the more rewarding, many of the competitors thanked me afterward. And that’s really what I want: for them to feel that Scav has given them the opportunity to do something cool. Afterward us judges played around in the maze ourselves, just like I used to do when I was a little kid playing in the mazes made by my mother.

Now I’m vaguely watching some Scavvies play reverse Scrabble.

Scrabble can be frustrating because, well, those can’t possibly be real words. Phonies is much easier,because nothing is a word. Players will compete in a best-of-three phonies tournament. All of the
rules of Scrabble apply, except only words unacceptable in the Official Word List are acceptable for
play, and there will no longer be a 50-point bingo bonus. Also, you are now required to pronounce and
define each word after it is played. The tournament will commence at 3:00 p.m. on Saturday in the
McCormick Tribune Lounge. BYO Scrabble board. [15 points for first place, 10 points for second
place, 5 points for third place, 2 points for participation]

Words include things like “Iobycie.” It’s very high stakes, clearly.