Local News : Sunday, August 13, 2000

by Florangela Davila
Seattle Times staff reporter

How many software developers does it take to climb the Space Needle?

One, maybe. It depends on who had the smarts to get there first.

In this brainy, high-tech region, getting to the Space Needle early this morning meant figuring out yesterday afternoon just what those seven cars parked in Belltown, with the fake license plates, were all about.

Such clues were part of a high-tech scavenger hunt called "The Game."

Ten teams, largely high-techers, paid $25,000 each to play, with proceeds going to charity.

With their gizmos and minivans, they competed in a 24-hour, elaborately scripted adventure requiring equal amounts of cranial oomph and old-fashioned spunk.

Teams advanced on a course throughout the city after uncovering and deciphering a series of clues. Speed determined the winner. The contest was to end at 10 o'clock this morning.

If they correctly figured out earlier clues, team players were scheduled to climb the Space Needle on a ladder very early this morning and retrieve another clue from its top. Organizers said they had permission to climb the privately-owned Needle.

Adventures yesterday included going to the Mariner baseball game and leading kids in a cheer; digging through a freezer in a Rainier Valley supermarket; visiting an inmate at the Kent Regional Justice Facility; dining at Tulio's; crashing a party, and navigating the Alaska Airlines flight simulator.

A phone at Discovery Park, a theater marquee and a car license plate all yielded clues to the game.

For the first time in the game's 15-year history, each team's fee will be turned over to charity. The $250,000 raised this time will be donated to Vision Youth, an inner-city-youth support program of the Federal Way-based World Vision relief and development agency.

The Game started at 10 a.m. yesterday in the lobby of a downtown high-rise.

In walked employees from Microsoft, Amazon.com, Check Point, RealNetworks, XYZFind. Mountain bikes, reference books, cordless saws, wetsuits, laptops, global positioning systems, fax machines, Yellow Pages, atlases - whatever a team selected to use as equipment - were packed in vans and RVs outside.

The veteran players, in their electronica, looked slick - Secret Service smugness with the coolness of "Men in Black."

The rookies looked relaxed.

"We found some cell phones to use, and we finally figured out how to use the Palm Pilot," said Deb Smucker, who works for an educational travel company.

"This thing even has Web access. It's very exciting."

She was part of one of the more unusual teams: hers included a community-college teacher, an elementary-school teacher, and a city of Seattle employee. Her team was sponsored by an anonymous donor.

Winners of The Game get to brag and, indeed, previous victors have been downright smug.

Competition can be intense.

When asked whether a reporter could tag along, one team member, a Microsoft employee, said, "There's a cost associated with that, and we have not won before."

In other words, no.

As one Team Gold member (each team is named after a color) put it, the know-how required to best play The Game really boils down to being an "abstract analysis specialist" - i.e., an out-of-box thinker.

In a past game, participants were handed a CD-ROM with snippets of different James Bond movies. Each snippet referred to a movie and a letter of the alphabet, which led to another clue.

"We'll be asked to be physical, we'll be asked to be mental," said Casey Tompkins, a software project manager, who whispered his team had packed a butane flame thrower in the event, say, they had to send smoke signals. Or something.

Copyright © 2000 The Seattle Times Company