Rules of the Orienteering Challenge

Idea

The orienteering challenge is an urban competition that aims for (re)discovering the city while solving puzzles.

Process

The challenge consists of three stages. At the start of each stage the team is given a paper with 5 puzzles: 4 intermediate ones and 1 final (checkpoint). The order in which the team solves (and visits) the intermediate puzzles does not matter. If the team cannot find an answer to a puzzle they can skip it.

Puzzles

Each puzzle describes a place in the city. The team should guess which place it is, go there and answer the question that is given together with the puzzle.

A (lame) example:

Stage 1. Question 1.

The puzzle: Where A and B meet.

The answer: Hotel de ville (trams A and B).

The question: How many benches are on the square?

Answers

Each team is given a notebook to write their answers and the time at which they visit the corresponding places.

The notebook page looks like this:

	Time	Answer
Stage 1. Question 1	10:05	blah-blah
...	...	...
Stage 1. Question 5	12:03	<Signature of an organiser>
Stage 2. Question 1	13:50	blah-blah-blah
Stage 2. Question 2	12:15	blah

Another page of the team’s notebook contains the information on the public transport they use, e.g.:

Which transport?	Departure	Arrival	Departure time
Tram B	Peixotto	Hôtel de Ville	9:40
Tram A	Sainte-Catherine	Place du Palais	10:00
Bus 45	Salinières	Gare St. Jean	10:30

Transportation

Public transport, bicycles, rollers, kick scooters, monocycles, tricycles, segways,  tandems, skateboards, wheelchairs and feet are allowed.

Teams

1. Up to 4 people per team are allowed.
2. When registering, the team should provide their name and a list of the names of the participants.
3. During all the competition the members of the team should stay together, and should be present all together at every checkpoint. There might be a control at any time of the competition. The participation of a team whose members won’t follow this rule, will be terminated.

Time

Start

The starting time will be different for all the teams in order to avoid a hassle at the start.

After the registration each team will be assigned an unique number. The teams will start one after another with a gap of some minutes, according to their number.

The first team will start at 9:30am.

Finish

The finish will close at 7pm. The participation of any team not arriving to the finish before that time will be terminated.

Duration

The maximal duration of the challenge is 8 hours per team. Every additional minute will discount 0.5 points from their score (see Scoring). Note that all the teams must finish before the closure of the finish (7pm).

Equipment

(provided by team members themselves)

Each team must have:

• a pen
• a watch (or a mobile phone)
• a map of the city (either digital or analog)

Having a mobile phone is recommended for being able to contact the organizers in case of emergency, or if the team decides to end the competition before reaching the finish.

Scoring

Scores will be calculated as follows:

number_of_correctly_solved_questions * 10 - number__of_minutes_after_the_deadline / 2

Teams with same scores will be ranked according to the time they spent to finish the competition (the less time the better).