Tales from The Social Club: Mysterious Clues, Curious Minds, Puzzling Places
Meeting Date and Time: Tuesday, March 12, 2024 from 5:30 PM to 8:00 PM
Meeting Location: Astor Place Plaza, 149-179 E 8th St, New York, NY 10003
A large cube that rotates on its axis, a clock inside a musical note, and an arch inside a square. So what did I do in The Social Club? Well, that is what you are about to find out.
At this meeting of The Social Club, I participated in Secret City Legends of the Village Scavenger Hunt. I met the group at the Alamo/Astor Place Cube in Astor Place Plaza.
Upon arrival, we were introduced to Julie, our scavenger hunt host. After Julie explained the rules of the hunt, we split into 2 teams named Cravers and Puzzle People. These names were created by our own members. I was on the Puzzle People and can tell you that we did not solve all the clues as we did not have enough time to do so (to the best of my memory there were about 60 clues). Even with two hour duration of the group there were more clues than we could solve. However, solving everything wasn't really the goal as much as working together and having fun. Of the clues we did attempt, I will only give you a few examples as I could write a novel if I went into every clue we tried to solve and this is just a blog entry. I will give you a description of the places we visited and some pictures.
Upon starting the scavenger hunt, our team first stopped at this remarkable statue of Peter Cooper, the founder of the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art college.
After that, we observed the outside of a building which had the words "The Carl Fischer® Music Publishers Since 1872" painted on the side of a building. Also, painted next to those words is a musical one eighth note with a clock inside it.
Next, our adventures took us underground into the Astor Place subway stop of the downtown 6 train. The clue we were given said that the name of the entrance to this building was the entrance to the old New York Mercantile Library. As you can see from the image below, the building is Clinton Hall. This is one clue that we got correct.
We also passed a store that, in addition to posting its standard hours of operation, also posted those hours on another sign in a most creative way saying "I open when I get here and I close when I leave."
We ended our scavenger hunt at the Washington Square Arch in Washington Square Park with only a mere minute to spare before we would have been late and docked points by Julie. Interestingly enough, even though we got there first, the other team ended up winning the scavenger hunt. The final score was Cravers 33, Puzzle People 21.
Astronomy is a passion of mine so I will end by including this picture I took in Washington Square Park of Jupiter (the "star" in the picture) and the Moon in the NYC night sky.
