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(Photo: Courtesy of Grand Central Terminal) |
The four-day Thanksgiving weekend is a welcome break from school, but let’s face it—it’s also a long stretch when all that’s planned is eating. Bret Watson, creator of the Watson Adventures scavenger hunts, is hoping that at least a handful of families will want to get off the sofa. This Saturday, after many parental requests, he’ll hold his first post-feast pursuit, where multigenerational teams will compete to find facts and objects in the labyrinthine passages of Grand Central Terminal. Part of the fun in Watson’s games is the riddlelike clues, like this one: “If you talk to the wall, people may think you’re nuts.” (Answer: There’s a carved group of acorns on the wall of the Whispering Gallery, the spot near the Oyster Bar where you can hear someone talking from across the room.) The 90-minute search also calls for teams to get involved in goofier activities, like posing for photos (BYO camera) and enlisting strangers to help out. New York trivia buffs will be impressed by the level of detail in the hunt, compiled by a team of history wonks and Watson, a former journalist atEntertainment Weekly who admits to a love of Sherlock Holmes. Though he’s expanded his hunts throughout the country and into Puerto Rico, it’s obvious that he’s a pure New Yorker at heart. At one point, “I started marking out all the streets I’d walk,” he said about developing the games. “I’ve subsequently learned that there are people who’ve taken it to a much more obsessive extent. That’s hard-core New York–nerd stuff.”
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