Winning duo
Father-and-daughter team first to solve riddles in the 16th annual egg hunt
As usual, the winners of Joe’s Mildly Entertaining Easter Egg hunt proved harder to fool than I expected. h A Laotian
Buddhist shrine tucked into an East Side neighborhood? They knew it. Two virtually identical statues of an aviator?
They located the right one. h The 16th annual contest challenged readers to decipher rhyming riddles pointing to the location of imaginary eggs. The winners of the always competitive early-bird prize are Steve Huggins, 54, of Bexley, and his daughter, Betsy, a 22-year-old Ohio State University student. h Their 10 correct answers arrived in my email inbox at 12:03 a.m. Tuesday, two minutes after the last riddle in the contest had been posted on Dispatch.com. h Steve Huggins, an engineer, admitted he was actually asleep at 12:03 a.m., but his daughter woke him up to say she’d sent the 10th answer. h “She’s really good at internet searching,” Steve Huggins said.
It didn’t hurt that the Bexley natives were solving a final riddle about statues of Jerrie Mock, a Bexley mother of three who became the first woman to fly solo around the world in 1964.
“I did know who Jerrie Mock was,” Betsy Huggins said.
She was also familiar with the Buddhist shrine, Watlao Buddhamamakaram, because she went to Bishop Hartley High School, which is nearby.
The egg hunt victory will probably count as only her third-best accomplishment of the spring. She graduates in May from Ohio State University with two undergraduate degrees (strategic communications and theater.)
She and her father beat the next closest contestants — Patti Hambley, of Columbus, and former winner Dave Dury, of Columbus, — by two minutes. Their answers both arrived at 12:05 a.m.
The Hugginses win $75. Claiming the other $75 prize is Lou Tomlin-king, 61, of Grandview Heights. Her name was drawn at random from among all the entries that had 10 correct answers.
Tomlin-king, who retired from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services last year, was quick at solving the final riddle. Her answers arrived at 12:22 a.m. Living in central Ohio since 1988 was a big help in the contest, she said.
The contest drew 243 entries, with 111 getting all 10 correct. That’s about 45%, nearly identical to the percentage of perfect scores in last year’s contest.
The first riddle was among the most troublesome. It referred to Flint Ridge Ancient Quarries and Nature Preserve, site of pits dug by native people in search of flint for toolmaking and jewelry.
Also giving contestants trouble was No. 8, which referred to the Beach Road Bridge, a 19th-century metal-truss span that was moved from its original location on the Big Darby Creek to the Alum Creek Greenway in Westerville.
Among the easier riddles was No. 2, which referred to the Tee Jaye’s Country Place restaurant at Morse Road and North High Street. The restaurant’s pending closure — and the uncertain fate of its huge neon arrow sign — have been in the news in recent weeks.
The final act in every Egg Hunt is the court of appeals, where I entertain objections from contestants who argue that their wrong answers should be counted as right. Email me if you want to make a case. joe.blundo@gmail.com @joeblundo