Collector's Showcase

by Dan Katz and Foggy Brume

Featuring Dan Katz as Algernon, Francis Heaney as Ernie, Graham Wright as President Flash, and Mike Selinker as the Holodeck Director
Answer: UNPARALLELED

At the start of hunt, teams received this scoresheet. They were encouraged to collect the items on the scoresheet, with an eye toward making certain aspects of their selections unique. For example, for two items that were anagrams of each other, they might find a "mousetrap" and "route maps" (Beginner's Luck), a "gold hatpin" and a "plaid thong" (Codex Magliabechiano), a "periodic table" and an "edible apricot" (Team Unseen), or a "silk thread" and a "Dalek shirt" (Optimus Funk).

At the event, Algernon described a game that was a fusion of a scavenger hunt and the game Scattergories. The teams' first answer sorted them into somewhat unequal groups of "Breakfast," "Lunch," and "Dinner." Ernie took the Breakfast group, Algernon took Lunch, and President Flash took Dinner.

Then, the groups compared their lists of items they'd brought, and matching items cancelled. If, in the creation of a print or video advertisement for an alien escort service in which the alien's skin color was expected to be unique, two teams called out "Taupe!" they got 0 points. If, however, they didn't get a match, they got 10 trillion points. When a team got 100 trillion points, they got Ernie and Algernon's Collectible Disaster Response Sheets, as well as a voucher for dollarbucks.