Solution to Hunt: Why did the chicken cross the road?

The following is the solution for the hunt. Enjoy!

Clue #1

Cornish, Devon and Selkirk are 3 types of Rex cats. We made reference to "hip cats" which translates to "jazz". If you searched for "Rex", "jazz" and "Toronto", you would have found The Rex. If you went to this location, you would have found one of our stickers with JAZZ HANDS on it. When you submitted "jazz hands" for your answer, you got some secret info: the letters Q, H and A. The Rex was nice enough to offer a coupon for a discount on lunch. Hopefully you checked it out.

Clue #2

We next asked for the name of a downtown park that had a skating rink in the winter and a fountain in the summer. You didn't have to go to the actual park but needed the name. See clue #5 for the answer.

Clue #3

Any of you that did our "City Hall - X marks the spot" hunt back in October may remember the stairwells we are referring to. Sadly, there is no "Chicken" stairwell despite strong petitioning to city hall. The statue we wanted you to find was of Winston Churchill. On the back of the statue is the plaque below:

Typing in your answer got you some secret info: Q, N, F and N.

Clue #4

This was potentially a fairly hard clue. If you picked up on College art classes downtown, you may have realized we were referring to OCAD. However, if you went directly to OCAD, you wouldn't have found it. Wait until clue #6 for the answer.

Clue #5

Ah haiku! If you were to search the haiku available at the haiku hotel for Toronto: here, you should found a haiku named "Seeking Park in TO". Since it was such a nice haiku, it is repeated below:

Leisure Rules they say
May 9, 1928
will help you find the park.

The only real piece of info here is the date: May 9, 1928. Again, Google saves the day. Searching for this date produces a hit for a Wikipedia article. Scrolling down to 1928, you will find a reference to Barbara Ann Scott. Who also happens to have a park named after her. Typing in your answer got you some secret info: A, Q, P, U and R.

Clue #6

Oh, what a helpful clue for those that were stuck on clue #4. If you made your way to OCAD, then walked south on McCaul, looking west, you would have found the chick. The chick was painted on the north wall of 52 McCaul. 52 McCaul is a pretty cool place. It's worth another visit there as everything is Well and Good. For the answer, we accepted uber - with or without the umlaut. Submitting the answer got you some more secret info: F, G, A, H and G.

Clue #7

A trip down memory lane. Rocky and Bullwinkle refers to a very old animated television series. Read about it here: Rocky and Bullwinkle. What you needed to know was that Rocky was a squirrel and Bullwinkle was a moose. There also happen to be two stairwells at Nathan Phillips Square named Squirrel and Moose (apparently squirrels and moose made "stairwell status", chickens... still no). If you went to Squirrel stairwell, then to Moose stairwell, it would lead you to the statue of Winston Churchill.

Clue #8

If you didn't pick up on the reference to "rex", this clue should have helped you find The Rex.

Clue #9

We have entered the "solver" phase of the hunt. Based on correctly locating the 4 places we wanted you to find, you now have 4 sets of characters. You should have:

QHA
AQPUR
QNFN
FGAHG!

Clue #9 says to order these strings from shortest to longest to form the string: QHAQNFNAQPURFGAHG! and then decipher (but it doesn't tell you how to decipher)...

Clue #10

This clue tells you what type of cipher (a Caesar cipher) was used in order to decipher the string you have. It was devised by Julius Caesar but it doesn't tell you how much to shift the letters by. That is left as an exercise for the reader. At least until the next clue.

Clue #11

If the cipher is getting you down, this clue tells you that "nowhere" is the cipher text for "abjurer". This gives you a subset of the letters you need and if you can detect the pattern, then you can solve the entire puzzle.

Clue #12

If you read about the Caesar Cipher, you know that you are supposed to shift the letters a certain amount but we didn't tell you how many to shift. This clue just did: 13.

Now deciphering the string QHAQNFNAQPURFGAHG!, you should get DUNDASANDCHESTNUT!. If you were to go to the intersection of Dundas and Chestnut, and you crossed north or south on the west side of the intersection, between the streetcar tracks, you would have found the footprints in the concrete.

And if you were *really* observant, you noticed that if you draw a line from each location you had to find to Dundas and Chestnut, you get a chicken foot!