Picture this: I invite you to a party at my house that starts at a very specific time. I tell you to dress like a detective, but I won’t tell you why. You show up in costume and are greeted by me, wearing a cherry red vinyl trench coat. The party start time rolls around and I am nowhere to be found! You and all of the other guests get a cryptic text message with a curious image that says, “You are the detective — where am I?” The hunt has begun.

Looking at the image, you can see that there is a red star over what appears to be Copenhagen, Denmark, and that I am holding white and yellow flowers in my hand (daisies.) You also take note of the “Four exciting detective adventures inside!’ but you stash that away for later because it doesn’t seem immediately relevant yet. You have just noticed the “Flower Market Copenhagen” poster in the living room.

Underneath the poster, you find a yellow sticky note that reads,
“Before John retired and sold Giovanni’s, he was my favorite neighbor.
Finding the photo of us in Giovanni’s is your next labor.
Hopefully you enjoy being private investigators!”

You notice that some of the letters are bold, but you don’t know what to do with that information yet so you stash it away for later.

All my friends are well acquainted with my walls of Polaroids, so you go hunting for the photo of me and John there. You find it 10 feet off the ground, in the very corner of the wall.

You find a clue folded behind it, saying “What’s missing?” followed by a bunch of acronyms stacked in two columns, with ci bolded. (You text me asking for a hint. I ask you if there is a physical set of objects that resembles the clue in your surroundings.)

You find two stacks of books whose titles match the acronyms on the sticky note. A book called Typography is missing from the acronyms. You flip through it and find a sticky note with a sudoku puzzle. This one has no bolded letters. Once you solve it, the highlighted boxes read 7/13/23. You proceed to the calendar hanging in the living room, and flip to July.

“Time to jazz up the hunt and leave the building.
(You thought this ended here? Not by a long shot!)
Pool your knowledge to seek out our school mascot.”

We live on the same block as a jazz bar with a pool table, whose owner has a husky who sometimes comes to the bar with him. You go in and ask the bartender to see the husky. He gives you a sticky note instead.

“I hope you’re not too jaded from the hunt so far.
I think you’ll commend me for not making you march all across town for this part.
But because your walk is so short, it’s only fitting
that you work for this clue — time to go digging.”

You rummage around the jade plant outside the martial arts studio on our same block, and find this.

“Now you get to go back home!... no, not that home, the one that’s long gone,
where we’d have $5 margars upstairs from John.
Some of your maps may lead you astray;
split up to cover ground & I’m sure you’ll find the right way!

One of the partygoers used to live with me above Giovanni’s in Boston. Our old address technically exists in San Francisco on Apple and Google Maps, but they disagree on which patch of Washington Square Park it is.

You split up like the clue says, and find the next clue under a flyer on a posterboard.

“You’ve been working well together, this union has gotten you far.
Look for some free reading at the end of the cable car.”

You proceed to the Union Square cable car terminus, and find... that the newspaper stands are completely blocked off by street vendors. I end up texting you the final clue.

“I’m at Jones and O’Farrell, brick building, black awning.
Find door number 8 and walk in without knocking.
The end of this game is finally nigh —
put the pieces together and tell me, who am I?”

You finally have all the bolded letters.

“Carmen Sanfrancisco!” you text me, and rush over to the specified location, a speakeasy with a detective themed room. We all have drinks and a merry time. I tell you about the multiples of 4 hidden throughout the hunt.

The hunt started at 4:44 pm (16:44) on 8/26/23 (2+6=8, 2^3=8.) The sudoku clue was stuck to page 88 of the Typography book, and the date that it revealed adds up to 16 (7+1+3+2+3=16.) There were 4 exciting detective adventures inside, just like the very first clue promised, followed by 4 outside. There are 8 newspaper boxes in each group on the streets of San Francisco. The number on the door to The Library is 8.

The dinky little invite above is something I threw together in Figma to get some experience with the pen tool. The “where am I” image is something I made in Photoshop, based on a Carmen Sandiego book cover. You may notice even the light on my face is coming from the same direction as the light on Carmen’s! The rest of the details (logo, orange corner, etc.) I removed because I didn’t want them to distract from the relevant information for the clue.