The 6th Annual FP Scavenger Hunt

On August 24th, 2017, the 6th annual Function Point Scavenger Hunt took place. The fierce competition and the mentally challenging riddles were set to give the winner a year’s worth of bragging rights and your name engraved on the legendary FP trophy. It’s always an intimidating experience for even the most veteran Function Pointers.

This Year We Went Back to School

The office gathered together to listen to the organizers as they instructed us on what would happen next. We were told the hunt’s theme was ‘Back to School’ and it was going to take place at UBC, which just a short jaunt from our office.

The rules have changed and it wasn’t a race back to the office but the winner would be determined solely on points from the hunt and the infamous gauntlet.

“Read the instructions CAREFULLY or get ready to lose”. Stated John, one of the organizers.

Everyone had until 4 pm to complete as many questions as they could and head back to the office. But before we could leave to start the hunt we had to solve a set of riddles. Here’s the first one we had to solve:

After each team solved the riddles they were handed an envelope which contains:

• 7 more riddles
• 7 clues for each riddle that had to be discovered at UBC
• 1 page for bonus points (photos & videos)
• 1 vine of grapes
• 1 stick of chalk

Let the Games Begin

Everyone quickly finished the riddles and raced off to UBC following the instructions handed to us as we left FP Headquarters.

Each team had the same set of riddles and questions, but all in a different order. The twist here was each team had to solve the riddles and complete all the bonus items within the hour. These bonus items consisted of exactly what you’re imagining, embarrassing photos with strangers feeding us grapes, jumping into fountains, playing instruments… the list goes on.

When 3:30 hit each team finished up any questions they had left and headed back to the office. That was just the first half of the hunt, next up we had the Gauntlet. Which in the past has included eating bugs and races. Safe to say we were all on edge to see what they had come up with.

The Gauntlet

The morning of the hunt, after we found out the teams we had to select the players that would do each gauntlet event based off of each event title — not knowing what each person would have to take part in. Finally, the gauntlet starts and the events are announced:

Wax on, Wax off

Most teams had imagined the Karate Kid for this one. Nope, we were handed waxing strips. Here’s how it went:

Siskel & Ebert

Of course, everyone was thinking some sort of movie review trivia but again, not even close. We witnessed the most intense series of thumb wars.

Blimpy

The majority of the teams thought that this game was named after Blimpy Burger and assumed this would be the dreaded eating event. But, instead of a bucket of worms, a bucket of water balloons was opened.

Pong Relay

Before the games, we were told this event included every team member. So we were all prepared for running while handling ping pong balls (secretly hoping it was beer pong).

David and Not Goliath

This event was pretty much exactly what everyone was thinking — we were just missing the slingshot and Goliath. They gave us a toy gun and the goal was to hit as many cans over as possible.

Remember me?

The last and final event. Last year’s hunt also included this event name, so everyone assumed that it was going to be questions about the history of Function Point. To our surprise, it was actually a memory game from last year, where only the cardio-inclined individuals succeeded.

In true Function Point fashion, we finished with a celebration of good food and better company. Vera’s Burger Shack set up out back and grilled us up some much-deserved burgers. At the end of the day, we’re all on the same team — but only until the next week, when we found out which team won.

And The Winner Was…

This year Team Animorphs took the cake (and the prize money, and the trophy, and the bragging rights). But don’t worry: we’ve got 364 days left to prepare for FP scavenger hunt 2018.

Check out all of the photos from our 6th Annual Function Point Scavenger Hunt album.