Photo: Courtesy of Cardinal Industries

Yesterday around 1:40 p.m., a man walked into Clinton Square, a public park in Syracuse, New York, placed the Sex and the City trivia game on the steps of the Soldiers and Sailors monument commemorating the Civil War, and scuttled away. Onlookers were confused. Why had the man left the box? Had he memorized all the answers, and therefore the game no longer presented a challenge (it was, after all, the regular version, not the Platinum Edition)? Or was it something darker? Eventually, paranoia got the better of them, and someone called the police, who arrived on the scene, sealed off the area, and called a bomb-disposal unit to inspect the game. A reporter also arrived, and depicted the tense scene for people at home reading about it on the Internet:

The box is on a step on the fountain side of the monument. The wind blew florescent [sic] pink game cards into the square's fountain, where they sank.

Police apparently tried to track down the man who left the box, the reporter related, but they were "unsuccessful." Was he hiding until his plan was carried out?

A little over two hours later, around 4 p.m., the bomb-disposal unit arrived and determined that the box did not contain a bomb. The reporter added an update to his story:

Police reopened Clinton Square at about 4 p.m. and determined the box did, in fact, contain game pieces from the "Sex and the City" trivia game.

Later, news of the incident provoked laughter, and even anger: "Are you serious?" one commenter wrote on the newspaper's website. "What a waste of our taxpayers money." But we couldn't help but wonder: Is it not possible that there are some terrorists out there who possess a sense of irony?

Police clear Clinton Square after suspicious box is found [Syracuse.com]