The Hunt: Winners of Mr. Stout's Progressive Critical Thinking Challenge Announced

Nearly eight years ago, the late Director of Academics and Assistant Head of School, Ken Rodgers, decided to start a daily trivia challenge with Church Farm School students. He circulated the first question via email, and while chatting with English teacher David Stout in his office, the duo quickly became distracted by the constant dinging of Ken’s inbox. Ken was taken aback by the overwhelming response, and, knowing Stout was fond of brain teasers, asked him to flesh out the daily challenge into something broader and harder. The Hunt was born.

The Hunt is a progressive critical thinking challenge where teams of students race to solve puzzles featuring anagrams, pictograms, cryptograms, cryptoquotes, alpha numeric coding, ciphers, petroglyphs and good-old fashioned research. Each puzzle points to someone or something related to Church Farm School, Stout says, and the teams must retrieve their next clue from that person or location in order to proceed. In this way, the puzzles are also educational, teaching the students about the history of the school or its personnel.

The first clue Stout ever created was based on a braille symbol that resides on his classroom door. The clue was a black screen with the braille dots flashing. “Ken was so confused,” he recalls. “He was like, ‘there isn’t a question?’” In fact, the dots correlated to a cellphone key pad and, if the students deciphered them correctly, they could discern a school telephone number ending in 380. The number dialed a phone in an empty classroom featuring a recording by Stout and pointing students to the next puzzle clue. Stout’s desire for complexity and cleverness began in year one, and has only grown.

Stout says he keeps a pad in his office for jotting down ideas as they come to him throughout the year, and throws them in a box that he culls through each summer. “It takes me about a week to create the entire puzzle,” he says. Over the years, the students have developed best practices that ensure they will make it past the first clue. “Our students are really good competitors. They thrive on it,” Stout says. “Originally, they were pairing up with their friends. Then they realized they would do better if they diversified: so now the teams will have someone who excels at math and science, English, history and athletics.”

The Hunt usually lasts about six to seven months, with students begging Stout throughout the year for some help. When you see the sample clues, you’ll realize why: there are layers upon layers of clues that are incredibly challenging. Which makes victory all the sweeter.

During the 2014-15 school year, 40% of the student body enrolled, with 73 students on 18 teams. 

Congratulations to Team Diversity, comprised of (pictured left to right with Mr. Stout) Naseem Bryant ’17, Eli Hernandez ’16, Emmit Jefferies ’16 and former student Tim Lopez, who took almost nine months to solve The Hunt. Honorable mention goes to the runners-up: Steven Yuh ’15, Zeeshan Zahid ’16, Donald Albritton ’16 and Akshay Rana. Winners earned trophies with their names, their names on the winners’ plaque in Stout’s classroom, $200 gift card, a pizza/wing party and probably the best prize of all: bragging rights.