“A pretty little street, most would say. Many pictures are taken here every day. But caution- cobblestones are no joke! Go to the street named after the nut of an oak.”
This clue was one of many riddles participants in Boston University’s second annual Most Amazing Race sprinted to solve on Saturday.
From 9 a.m. to about 4 p.m., 20 teams of five to eight racers put their best feet forward and ran around Boston, solving riddles and competing to win $1,500 for the group or $3,000 for a student group.
The race, hosted by Student Activities Office, was inspired by the CBS show “Amazing Race.”
On the reality show, teams of two travel around the world and compete with other teams to be the first to arrive at “pit stops” and avoid falling last, which usually results in elimination.
Similarly, BU students had to travel Boston by foot or public transportation to reach “pit stops” and get stamps on their “passports,” notebooks SAO created in order to prevent cheating and help keep track of how much each team had completed.
At each location, SAO representatives were standing to hand out the next clue and stamp the team members ‘passports.’
From Faneuil Hall to the Prudential Center, teams traveled a total of eight legs.
In addition to answering riddles, teams also had to have one participant perform a certain task at each roadblock, such as answer questions about various exhibits at the Museum of Science and “marrying” a random person outside of the Trinity Church.
“We were a lot stricter this year,” said College of Communication senior and SAO coordinator Alex Shuck. “We can make sure they can go to every single thing because last year they would just skip certain events so now we have the passports so if they don’t get the stickers they are eliminated because they didn’t do the entire course.”
Participants were also not allowed to use bikes or cell phones, a change from last year’s rules.
Team BUCE took first at 2:59 p.m., with Team Redemption in a close second, by one minute.
College of Communication junior and Team Redemption member Casey Rackham said her team was a combination of two competing teams from last year.
“Compared to last year, we were so much better,” she said. “We rarely got angry with each other and we kept it together. We made sure to let everyone say where they thought the next clue would lead us, and we were on top of our game the entire time. And we had tons of fun the whole way through.”
Rackham said, however, the worst part was coming in second when they thought they were first.
“The other team got a lucky break and hopped on a bus while we got on to the T,” she said. “It just shows that you can never trust the MBTA system!”
“And the running, that was pretty bad,” she added. “It was worse than the half marathon that I ran. . .it just shows how truly challenging this race is.”
Shuck said he thinks the second annual race was a success.
“I’m happy with the event this year,” he said. “There’s always stuff to improve on ways to make it bigger, greater more solid but we only had five to seven people planning it and 12 people today running it. . . so I’m pretty happy at how well it turned out despite this.”
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