The task: solve a series of 18 puzzles, the solutions to which revealed the location of the murder, the suspect who committed the crime, and the weapon with which the dastardly deed was performed.

A sampling of some of the puzzles.

As if that wasn’t complicated enough, teams were also required to gather as many items from our insanely elaborate list as possible. Solving the puzzles earned every team an automatic 150 points; the items themselves carried varying point values, and the more items collected, the better a team’s score. And, oh yeah–one of the teams (all of which were named after characters in the game) was the “murderer,” a stigma that included an automatic 50-point deduction.

A lucky player returns with a keyboard, an ironing board and a bag of assorted nonsense.

The hunt resulted in a truly impressive haul of items, including a number of plums, a tin of herring in tomato sauce (fulfilling the requirement of a red herring, har har), an omellette (which was promptly transformed into an omellette burger during the ensuing barbecue), a t-bone steak (which was promptly grilled), a bowling pin (for no reason), and a laundry list of items scrounged from Goodwill, the dollar store, people’s homes and other places around town.

The omellette burger, perfect at any time of day.

Teams also received extra points for the weirdest item they could bring back. One team returned with a cute-but-creepy kitten-adorned pot-holder (stolen from the kitchen in Stately Clow Manor), while another team brought back the “Big Trouble in Little China” soundtrack on cassette–and a tape recorder with which to play it. And then there was “Daddy’s New Roommate,” a children’s book explaining the sudden appearance of daddy’s “friend” Frank after daddy and mommy got divorced. A dramatic, enlightening reading ensued, and while it had nothing to do with the aforementioned board game, it was an awesomely random item.

The winning team and their exquisite trophy, the "Champion of Excellence" award.

This was the second Scavenger Hunt–the first one unfolded in September 2007 and was based in part on the infamous Smuttynose Murders. And while we’re resting calmly on our scavenging laurals for the moment, plans have already been made for Scavenger Hunt 3. Stay tuned.

As the Dover edition of Operation: Mindfuck continues, one can only hope the local Discordians start distributing some pope cards, so that we may all be ‘officially’ designated as Discordian Popes. Or cabbages. Or whatever.

Being a pedestrian in Dover sucks. There’s no need to gussy up the language or wax too eloquently on the state of walking around through Dover – it is quite simply a hazardous experience that, in the four years I’ve lived here, has only gotten worse. It’s particularly bad in the winter, when city sidewalks are left unplowed for days on end and ice and snow and snowbanks pile up to dizzying heights. In most cases, it’s safer to walk in the street than to wade through knee-deep snow on sidewalks hemmed in on all sides by giant snowbanks. Snow removal budgets are tight, and the city’s Community Services department is probably as overworked and underpaid as everyone else, but the general state of Dover’s sidewalks in the winter is about as bad as it gets.

Sadly, that’s not even the worst part. If, like me, you live just outside of downtown and make it through the hazardous sidewalks and into downtown proper, your chances of getting hammered by one of the thousands of inattentive motorists speeding through Dover each day increases by about a 1,000 percent. Dover’s main drag–Central Avenue and Main Street–resembles a race track, a one-way loop that encourages motorists in both directions to careen through as fast as they can in order to avoid the all-too-frequent traffic jams caused by a seemingly random array of traffic lights and crosswalks that seem to make getting through Dover much less safe than necessary. It’s a NASCAR arena with the added attraction of parked cars and moving targets. Last Thursday’s pedestrian accident is no surprise–the crosswalk at the intersection of Second Street and Central Ave. is poorly marked and motorists never pay attention to it, anyway. On more than a few occasions, I’ve had angry drivers honk and curse (and nearly run me over) at me for interrupting their speedy escape out of a Central Ave. traffic jam. The situation a few blocks up, at the intersection of Broadway, Central Ave. and Third Street, is even worse, with motorists going on and off of Third Street ignoring crosswalks, walk signals and hapless pedestrians with equal aplomb. The traffic lights at this already dangerous intersection were out of order on Sunday afternoon and still weren’t working as of 9:45 a.m. this morning.

The Dover Police Department has stepped up crosswalk patrols in the last year, and while the DPD does a fine job, it’s not enough. The layout of Dover’s downtown encourages this sort of behavior from drivers – and, for that matter, pedestrians. Dover’s pedestrians are by no means blameless, but getting around by crosswalk is no piece of cake. While there are four crosswalks in a four-block stretch on Central Ave. (from the intersection of Broadway/Third Street down to the intersection of Washington Street), there are only two crosswalks on Main Street and relatively few as you head north on Central Ave. There aren’t enough crosswalks, and the crosswalks we do have are just poorly placed. And those walk signals synced up with the traffic lights? Also fairly useless. They last all of 15 seconds–that is, when they’re actually working; if you want to (legally) cross the street at Broadway and Central when a big ‘ol freight train is coming through town, you might as well find a seat and wait it out.

There are improvements to be made–in fact, the city paid for a detailed traffic study a few years ago, but few changes have been made. Our fearless City Council instead devotes much of its time to shenanigans like this: “educational resolutions” that are little more than thinly-veiled personal conflicts between counselors. Local politics are always full of such nonsense, but Dover’s council is more egregious than most, with council business overwhelmingly taken up with discussions of Byzantine email policies and minute details about procedural questions that the average citizen doesn’t give a damn about. Some members of the council recognize this, at least (dubbing the whole motley group “collectively dysfunctional”), but that does little to change the fact the council does little of consequence. It’s not glamorous, but local politics is near about the only area where one can make decisions that have a discernible impact on citizens’ daily lives – an opportunity the majority of council members sees fit to squander in favor of petty political games.

Some progress might be made if City Council members were forced to be downtown pedestrians for a day. Climbing over snowbanks only to get mowed down by some angry driver might put counselors more in touch with the city’s actual problems. More likely, though, they’ll get hung up arguing about who crosses the street first and never make it off the sidewalk.