How To Play

Welcome to Tampa Bay Scavenger – I’m glad you’re here and I hope that you will have as much fun completing this quest as I have had in creating it for you. Before you get started though, you’ve probably got some important questions like, “how does it actually work.” Let me see if I can clear that up for you. Here’s how it works:

You’ll need to have a copy of the book “Tampa Bay Scavenger.” If you don’t have one, you can find it here: https://secrettampabay.com/shop/ols/products/tampa-bay-scavenger
Now that you’ve got the book, on this website you’ll want to make sure you click the “register” box, so that you show up on the leaderboard and can track your progress.
Ok, once you have the book and you’ve registered, it’s time to start solving the riddles. They are laid out by county and neighborhood. Once you figure out what the riddle is, make sure you take a picture of it.
As you solve the riddles, you can log in on this website to enter your answers and upload your photos. For every correct answer (both what/where the riddle is referring to and an image of it), you will get 1 point.
Once you have 91 points, you will unlock the first of 4 puzzle pieces. 181 points unlocks the second piece. 271 points unlock the third piece. 361 points unlocks the fourth and final puzzle piece.
There’s a two-line phrase written across the puzzle pieces, but it’s all jumbled up. Once you have the first two puzzle pieces, you can decipher the first line of the phrase. You’ll need the third and fourth pieces to figure out the second line of the phrase.
Entering the correct final phrase makes you a winner. The first ten winners will receive a special limited edition version of a poster created by super-talented local illustrator Bump Galletta. All subsequent winners will receive an unlimited edition version of the poster. There might be some other special goodies and treasures for winners as well.
Things will probably change from time to time – buildings get knocked down, businesses close, certain things become inaccessible – this means that updates and replacement riddles will be posted from time to time on the TB Scavenger Facebook group, so you’ll want to join that. It’s also a place where you can ask questions, get help, find out about upcoming scavenger events or just enjoy my occasional rambling posts.

That’s it, that’s how the hunt works. Please be sure to be safe and kind to yourself and others. Do not mess with any wildlife you encounter – gators, snakes, skunk apes, otters, sharks, spiders, brain-eating amoebas and a plethora of other critters will happily dismember and devour you, so for the love of god please leave them alone. Anyone caught destroying or damaging any of the scavenger hunt items will be disqualified. Also, at the moment there still happens to be a global pandemic going on. For this reason I’ve tried to put the vast majority of answers in outdoors places, but there are some that are located inside of buildings. If for any reason you are unable or uncomfortable going indoors, you can take a picture of the outside of the answer location and I will accept that as correct. Got it? Good, now go and have fun.