Nevermore Car Rally and Scavenger Hunt

The summer Kerry Hammond participated in a car rally Scavenger Hunt and today she’s here to tell us how much fun she had.

The Mystery Writers of America has many local chapters and the Rocky Mountain Chapter that I am a part of is a great group. This past summer they outdid themselves with the Nevermore Car Rally and Scavenger hunt. I was lucky enough to participate, and our team even brought home the trophy.

Liesa Malik and Suzanne Proulx were the creators and facilitators of the event, and they had help from our Rocky Mountain Chapter President Mark Stevens. Thirteen competitors met at the public library in Castle Rock, Colorado. We were assigned to teams, ours was the name of a Sherlock Holmes story: The Red-Headed League. We climbed into the four rally cars, eager to begin. Our instructions were simple: solve the puzzles and use the solutions to locate the next stop on our quest.

We were given envelopes for each clue and opened the first one as soon as we set off. We had to solve that clue before we could open next. The solution to each clue was a location and at each stop, we needed to take a photo of our team to prove we'd been there. We also had to answer a question relating to that location before we could open the next puzzle envelope. Each puzzle envelope had a different word along each of the four edges and the solution corresponded with something written on one of the four sides. We needed to open the envelope along the correct side for full points—ingenious.  

The puzzles were extremely challenging, and solving them required teamwork and all of the code breaking skills we've learned as mystery readers. Our competitive natures came out as we crossed paths with other teams at each location. I am happy to say that no laws were broken and much fun was had by all.