SMCR 2005
Best Video Competition:
At any point during the rally make a video advert for anything you can think of. Duration of the video should be no more than 30 seconds. It should be absolutely clear what you are advertising. The rest is up to your creativity and imagination.
If you do not have a camera, make arrangements with other competitors or organisers to borrow one.
The videos will be shown on the last day of the rally and will be judged by the other teams.
First prize 60 points
Second prize 40 points
Third prize 20 points
Stage 1
Normalisation stage from ESSO garage in Meyrin to Agip station on A5 appr 150 km from the start.
· Drive normally in convoy
· Don’t get lost!
To keep you entertained use your creativity to explain the following acronyms.
Submit the results at the end of the day, no later than 19:00 to the organisers. We will read the acronyms out at dinner and decide by popular vote
Winner of the Acronym Contest will get 30 points
Winner of the second place will get 20 points
Winner of the third place will get 10 points
If FIAT means ‘fix it again tony’ what does LOTUS stand for?
…………………………………………………………………………………………
LANCIA?
…………………………………………………………………………………………
BMW?
………………………………………………………………………………………..
TVR?
…………………………………………………………………………………………
VOLVO?
…………………………………………………………………………………………
LADA?
…………………………………………………………………………………………
FORD?
…………………………………………………………………………………………
Stage 2
You will have to leave the motorway at a place that rimes with 500. Drive to the lunch spot at a restaurant named after a famous aviator, located on the way from a place nostalgically reminiscent of a popular American sweet to a place with only one letter difference from the subway.
On your way take pictures of as many castles as you can. Every new castle captured by your camera will account for 1 point.
Please arrive by 12:00
If you are lost, call the organizers and lose 10 points for information given by them. You will be clearly prompted about the points you will lose if they give you the information you asked for.
Mike’s portable phone: +41-78-752-9860
Natasha’s portable phone: +41-79-244-6301
Stage 3
Minimum distance from lunch spot to:
Fossati house,
Meride,
Ticino.
Arrival time: 17:30
If you pass through Verbania, 30 km will be deducted from your total distance.
Everybody will be given 100 points to start with.
You will lose
· 10 points for each kilometre difference from the winning result for the first 5 km.
· 5 points for each additional km difference up to 10 km.
· 2 points for each additional km difference onwards
· and one point for every minute you are late.
You cannot lose more than 100 points total. Example: you are 2 mins late and have done 20 km more. You will lose:
· 10X5= 50 points for the first 5 kms
· 5X5 = 25 points for the next 5 kms
· 2X10=20 points foe the next 20 km
· 2 points for being late
· Total: 100-50-25-20-2 = 3
If you are 2 h late or 3 h late makes no difference to your score. BUT, you risk losing the next stage and missing dinner!
· Your covered distance will be taken from your odometer using only the kilometres part.
· It is to your interest to make sure that your odometer has just clicked to a ‘fresh’ km.
· You are allowed to inflate your tyres.
· You are not allowed to disconnect the drive to your odometer
· You are allowed to drive backwards maximum 1 km only if you made a mistake. No going around the car park in reverse!
· Anything not explicitly allowed is forbidden. If in doubt, call the organisers and ask.
NB: The map you have is from a reputable supplier, but has a scale of 1:400 000. It might be missing some of the small roads. You might find it advisable to get yourself a better map.
Stage 4
Game of Bocci. Winner will be decided by elimination. Points awarded to first 3 teams.
Fist place: 30 points
Second place: 20 points
Third place: 10 points
Stage 5
Drive South-West to a place whose first name combines two passions:
+ G +
Take the first passion, add a ‘g’ in it and simply add the second passion. Then add another name, common to that region.
According to (commonly inaccurate) viamichelin.com, the shortest route from Meride to your destination is 131 km.
Arrive at the restaurant which has Cosmos in its name by 12:00.
Panic envelope is worth 10 points. Call the organisers
Mike’s cell: +41-78-752-9860
Natasha’s cell: +41-79-244-6301
To keep you entertained on the way, please name the following famous wheels: (bonus points for naming models fitted)
Hand in the results to the organisers at the restaurant.
3 points will be awarded for each correctly identified wheel
1 point will be awarded for each correctly identified model
Name: …………………………………. Name: ………………………………….
Models fitted:………………………….. Models fitted:…………………………..
Name: …………………………………… Name: …………………………………..
Models fitted:………………………….. Models fitted:…………………………..
Stage 6
Treasure hunt – help Roger solve his problem.
Rules:
- each location correctly identified is worth 10 points.
- Each visual clue photographed is worth 2 points.
- Additional tasks are also worth 2 points.
- Panic envelope for each location is worth 10 points
Mike’s cell: +41-78-752-9860
Natasha’s cell: +41-79-244-6301
Extra bonus: Any pizzeria found within 20 km of the final destination is worth 10 points
Chapter 1
Roger Blankdoff shook his head: This cannot possibly be right, he thought. An impossibly little amount of information was written on this piece of paper, which had cost him so much to obtain. Less than 12 hours ago, he was happily sleeping in his privileged apartment of Oxford’s Corpus Christi college; his game of Polo from the day before had left him with this tickling numb sensation as the lactic acid slowly got diluted by fresh, oxygen-rich red cells. The call of his much younger blonde admirer that night left him completely indifferent. Then again, the electric signal in his telephone line could not convey the perfection of his stalker’s bottom contours; starting from a gentle hyperbola asymptotically reaching a darker, shaded part on one side while unceremoniously fading away to a category one topological object with just a hint of negative curvature.
He unfolded the piece of paper again, hoping for a flash of epiphany that he knew very well was not about to come the next moment. In a neat hand writing he again mentally noted the meaningless figures:
172 193 260 284 301 350 379 412 414 471 480 496 513 537 564 610 639 660 671 687
Two numbers were clearly standing out: 471 and 513. In all his years as professor of Symbology at Oxford, he never came across those numbers and he was not aware of any hidden meaning in the freemason or Jewish tradition. In his ears, the words of the Professor were still ringing:
You will travel far to a place where death is two letters away… There in the summit the splendour of my plan will be revealed…The left arm of the pentagram will guide you…
The Professor was telling him he had to go somewhere. But where, he had no clue. Something was telling him it cannot be very far, however. The Professor knew what he was doing. Blankdoff felt that he was being lead to his destiny as a pawn guided by an invisible hand in a game of power chess. A pawn is only told to move. It cannot decide off its own accord.
It was time to move on and Roger had a bit of time to worry about the numbers. He had to decipher a lot of other clues first. He paid the bill at Albergo Universo and headed for his car parked in the middle of the square. The car unlocked itself with the hollow sound of cheap magnetti-marelli door actuators made in Indonesia. He got in and instinctively reached for the floor of his car, next to the gear lever with his keys. There was nothing there. Looking down, he realised that he was poking the stained carpet of his rented Alfa Romeo 147. His Saab turbo, of course, had the ignition on the floor, as well as the wheel at the opposite side. And certainly smelled better than the alfa, which has been with no doubt rented by hordes of Italian chain smokers.
As he was ready to switch on, something caught his eye. It was a mural on one of the walls. It depicted a knight’s helmet on top of a shield. To Blankdoff it looked as if the knight was hiding behind the shield with arms extended in what he understood immediately to be a gesture of piece amongst the high ranking Masons. The colours of white, blue and red of the decoration of his helmet could be wrongly associated with the colours of France. Of course he knew well that they were simply the colours of the dukes of Savoy, that went to rule France during the seventeenth century.
What received his full attention now was the inscription below. At first sight it looked fairly innocent. But then he knew that such inscriptions usually carry a hidden message. He unfolded the other set of numbers he realised he had in his tweed jacket pocket. It read
3, 5, 4, 1, 6
He made the mental substitution of numbers and letters. Nothing. It was gibberish. It must be something else then. Somehow, he knew he needed to start from the third letter, but did not know how to proceed. And then it dawned on him. But of course. It is clearer than water flowing up high in the Apeninnes.
He now had his word. Problem was that his word was incomplete. He only had half his word of guidance. The Professor was not prepared to make things easy for him. He needed another clue to make the word complete. And he suddenly knew where to find it. He had to look for a church.
He remembered from long ago, that there was a church in Vignale with two famous frescoes painted on the front wall. He could not remember what exactly they depicted, but was convinced that this would offer the second clue he needed. He made it to the church with anticipation. The frescoes slowly came back from his memory. The one on the right was fairly unremarkable. It depicted the Ascension of Christ amongst doubters, believers, Roman guards, wise men and criminals. There was nothing in the individual persons that suggested any hidden message. He had to somehow zoom out and see the fresco as a whole. What does it show? Why did the artist choose the specific central image? What is the central image? And then he suddenly understood. He had the other part of the word he was looking for. It was actually the first part. Armed with the knowledge of where he had to go next, he set off spinning the tyres of his twinspark.
Your assignments:
1. Picture of insignia
2. Picture of fresco
3. Name of next location
Chapter 2
He was at his destination in less than ten minutes, the front tyres of the car complaining as it understeered its way through. The town is built on a hill, as most old towns in the area. The Professor was very clear: Look for the six torches in the stairway to heaven. Stairway to heaven? There were hundreds, maybe thousands of stairs in this place. Which one of them is stairway to heaven?
He parked the alfa and started wandering around. He had no idea where to start from. He found what he thought to be the most imposing building and started working his way around. But when he saw it he realised. The professor was right. This was no ordinary staircase. The torches were there, one of them damaged from the passage of time.
Your assignments:
1. Picture of staircase
2. Which part of the rotunda has something to do with the cover of the book?
4. What is the animal with a cross? Take a picture
Blankdoff scratched his head. So far he had faired well. He was afraid that the Professor was going to step up a gear for the rest of his quest. Already he had no clue how to reach his next destination. He knew it was not as close as his first stop. He also knew that the name of the place he was looking for was not a ”scramblis exactis” of a recurring geographical name in the region he was in. Scramblis exactis is a perfect scramble, where one simply rearranges the letters without leaving any out, or adding one in. This one was a ‘scramblis reducibilis’ where one did not need to add letters, but needed to leave one or more of the letters of the original word out. The very common recurring name was easy enough to find. But which letters was he supposed to rearrange? There were hundred of combinations, well, probably 10 factorial combinations or something. But then what do you do with two repeated letters? Divide by 4? He very quickly got lost trying to do the mathematics. Anyway, why does it matter? He thought. It is a big number, and I am not a professor of mathematics. Actually, Blankdoff was reasonably good at math at school and for a brief period during his early teens wanted to become a physicist. How wise was he to choose the virgin territory of symbology with its non-rigourous procedures, lack of peer review and great outdoor working opportunities. And the girls were always impressed when he explained the hidden meaning behind the single candle holder. He left it to his physicist colleagues to explain to them why water in the bathtub spins in a specific direction, but usually by the time the girls were interested in such questions, it was too late.
Anyway, he left his calculation at the very tentative 10!/4 and thought that this was a very big number. But what if only half the word needed to be scrabbled and the other half remained the same? He did not have anything to substantiate such a simplification, but somehow he was feeling lucky. So, he left the first part of the word intact and started scrabbling the other half. After a few iterations he constructed a word that somehow made sense. His success gave him strength…strength. The word made sense semantically but, but also it reminded him of something. His old flame Vittoria, very Italian down to changing subjects on-the-fly as she spoke, always kept a bottle of ’brut zero’ in her fridge for special occasions. It was an excellent bubbly white wine with great aroma reminiscent of a good Chardonnay and lasting pleasant aftertaste. As far as sparkling wines go, it was miles better than the usual crap they offer in Reims. Vittoria told him ‘and keep in mind that the region is much better known for its red wines’. The producer, Valentino, had a suitably romantic name, and Blankdoff would usually not remember much after the second bottle. Now he realised that the name he had constructed was the town producing the brut zero! A quick look at the map confirmed that this place existed and it was about 60 km away. Maybe two or three kilometres more, but not much more. Actually, it was a common name and he could imagine that many villages with the same name existed in different parts of the country. But he was somehow confident that he had chosen the right one. Slipping the clutch a bit too long for it being his own car, he set off to his destination.