A scavenger hunt team in Yarmouth works to decipher its first clue. This year the popular event will include references to Maine’s 200th. There are still slots open for the hunt, which takes place March 20. Courtesy / Yarmouth Community Services
YARMOUTH — For more than 30 years residents have pitted their wits against the hunt masters of the annual Starlight Scavenger Hunt, which challenges participants to solve a series of highly localized clues, mysteries and puzzles in a timed race.
This year’s event will have an added twist because hunt masters Mary Thorp and Timi Carter added clues related to Maine’s bicentennial. This year the state is celebrating its 200th birthday and Thorp said she and Carter wanted to incorporate “a lot of Maine’s history in a number of ways.”
Thorp provided an example of a clue from a prior hunt that asked participants to add one to the number of Maine counties, multiply that sum by the date in March when Maine became a state, and finally, multiply the total by the number of vowels in the state motto.
Karyn MacNeill, director of Yarmouth Community Services, said this week the adults-only event is “one of the few where adults can participate in a program uniquely designed for them.”
The hunt takes participants all over Yarmouth and often into the neighboring towns of Freeport, Cumberland and as far away as Falmouth, Thorp said. Slots are still open for this year’s hunt, which takes place at 7 p.m. Friday, March 20. See yarmouthcommunityservices.com for details.
MacNeill said Thorp and Carter have organized the event since 2001. Clues may include word puzzles, pictorial anagrams, complicated map readings or telephone book entries, Thorp said. She and Carter often spend the year jotting ideas down in a notebook, with sources that include community events, local news or topics of local interest. Each site is carefully vetted before the final clues are set and all property owners, abutters – even the police – are put on alert.
Thorp said each team is expected to hit the same number of sites, but the clues are provided in such a way that everyone takes a different route. That also means, she said, that teams can’t follow each other to try and get a leg up.
Each team is also given emergency clue envelopes, but Thorp said a certain number of minutes are docked if they’re forced to open the clue.
MacNeill said the event first got started in 1988 when Alan Hall, a long-time history teacher at Yarmouth High School, and Ken Nye, then the high school principal, offered a scavenger hunt for teachers. Word spread and the hunt attracted so much attention that Community Services took it over, she said.
Every year “we bring together anywhere from 50 to 100 adults who share in friendly competition, laughter, challenges, and community fun,” MacNeill said.
The trickiest part, Thorp said, is designing the clues in such a way that people can’t just go on their phones to find the answer. “Early on, that wasn’t as much of a problem, but nowadays everyone has instant access.”
Thorp was a participant for several years before becoming one of the organizers; she said she always had just as much fun whether her team won or came in last.
“Our real goal is to get people to think outside the box,” she said. “There’s really nothing else quite like it.”
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