Shifty Nifflers

We used our latest free scavenger hunt card this weekend to do the "Wizard School" (e.g., Harry Potter) themed scavenger hunt at the Museum of Fine Arts.

DH had not read the books, so he took charge of the navigation, which was invaluable (especially since some of us don't really have a sense of direction!).  After he got us to the correct room, we'd read the clue, then would translate the creatures and character names for him.  Then we all just had to figure out where they were in the works of art!

For the most part, we managed to do that pretty well, although there were a few questions that were perplexing or just plain unclear.   Happily we ended up with extra time so we could revisit those stumpers.

One of them involved counting the instances of a particular facial feature on some Japanese demons pictured on an accessory smaller than the palm of your hand.  This was above our line of sight, so the guys dutifully boosted (hauled?) the girls up so we could get a closer look.  Oof!  A magnifying glass sure would have come in handy!  But after conferring, we reached consensus on a number, and came out of that room feeling better about our answer.

Another one was a "which one of these items is NOT depicted somewhere in the room" question, which required all our eyeballs to scan everything in the room over and over.  Ultimately, we could not find two of the things exactly as described, but deciding that, although a type of animal and receptacle were slightly different than in the description, we had to regard them as close enough given that we couldn't even find the approximation of the other thing.

(I am being kind of general and vague here so I don't ruin the hunt for others if they happen to sign up!)

Finally there was a massive carved fireplace that supposedly had a particular mythical creature in its vicinity.  We spent forever staring at it, and just could not find this particular beast, although there were plenty of others (including lots of mashup monsters).  The question specifically asked the construction material of said beastie, so we just went with the material that appeared in the greatest quantity.  ;)

That was because we needed to start heading back to the entrance so we wouldn't be late - museums are big!  We debated team names on the way back and settled on with DH's variant of my suggestion: the Shifty, Nifty Nifflers.  

We ended up winning - and the guys thought that they heard that we won best team name also (although I wasn't sure.  I did hear the hunt host mention the name, but wasn't sure what she had said about it).  The people who came in second were two cute little kids with their parents, so we figured that, since we'd won before (plus the kids were small and had done really a great job), it'd be nice to share.  So we passed the prizes down to them.   :)

It was a fun afternoon.  (And I think we will probably go back - to linger over the art, this time, instead of the questions - to check out the new wing of the museum soon :))