Warrant 4.4: Solution
The magical thing you're supposed to realise, after futzing with it for a long time, is that *all of these things have something in common*, which is to say, each of these can be taken as a word-association thingie for a phrase either starring the word "Carmen" or "Sandiego". (Hence, the theme of this puzzle
matches the theme of the hunt.)
- baseball: San Diego Padres. [You probably had to realise the "Carmen/Sandiego" link before you would have figured this one out.]
- duck boats: Boston Common. [Pronounced in a proper Bostonian accent, of course.]
- fruit: Carmen Miranda. [Doesn't she wear fruit on her head?]
- hooked the worm: Carmen Electra. [A few months ago, she married Dennis Rodman in Las Vegas to much controversy. Rodman's lawyer claimed that he was drunk at the time. Yeesh! On http://headlines.yahoo.com/Full_Coverage/Sports/Dennis_Rodman/, Rodman is already twice referred to as the "Worm". And I swear there were all sorts of headlines about Carmen Electra hooking the worm in Las Vegas. *sigh*]
- Marc Tanner: Santiago, Chile. [A bit tricky, but you might have recalled reading about Marc on http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/acme.html. He's listed as "Marc 'Glad it's not so Chile out anymore' Tanner".]
- roller hockey international: San Diego Barracudas. [This one was kinda like "baseball", but a simple Yahoo! search on "Carmen" and "San Diego" or "Sandiego" would have yielded all of these.]
- Aztecs: San Diego State. [The San Diego State mascot is (are?) the Aztecs.]
- cheesey-poofs: Eric Cartman. [Being myself not a viewer of South Park, I have no idea what this means, but Various People insisted Eric Cartman would be identifiable by "cheesey-poofs".]
What next? Well, remove all the Carmens and Sandiegos. You're left with a bunch of words and those numbers on the puzzle; ie,
- Padres (4)
- Boston (4)
- Miranda (5)
- Electra (5)
- Chile (3)
- Barracudas (2)
- State (5)
- Eric (4)
That's just a simple "take the nth letter of the word" -- so you get R T N T I A E C which, if properly reassembled, spells the answer: INTERACT.