Every year, hundreds of University of Chicago students ignore their schoolwork for four days to participate in the world's biggest scavenger hunt. A dozen or so teams rush to build, find, and "borrow" hundreds of increasingly weird items on the hunt's epic list. This year, participants will celebrate the 25th anniversary of Scav by attempting to break the Guinness world record for largest hunt. The record is currently held by 212 Canadian schoolchildren. Far more than 212 UChicago schoolchildren show up each year, and so they've decided their efforts ought to be officially recognized. 

Even if you're unaffiliated with the U of C, you're still welcome to participate in the mania. While most of the teams are exclusive to residents or alumni of specific dorms, the Federation of Independent Scav Teams (aka the FIST) invites anyone from the Chicago area to come scav with us. You can check out our website or email our listserve (potato AT lists DOT uchicago DOT edu) for more information. 

The FIST uses an online wiki to keep track of items, so telecommuters are welcome if Hyde Park (or Chicago, period) is a trek. Just create an account and then you can claim items you'd like to complete. Past items have included yelling "theater" in a firehouse, building a working steam engine from scratch, building a working nuclear reactor from scratch (seriously: this is why we're famous), bringing an authentic Stradivarius to campus, and setting up a live-action roleplaying game of pong. 

If this kind of madness sounds like it's up your alley, we invite you to join us Wednesday night. Come on down to Hyde Park and help us make scavenger hunt history. The Guinness record tallying will happen at 11pm at Ida Noyes Hall, followed by the list release at midnight. If you can't make it to be counted as one of the official record-breaking participants, we encourage you to get in touch with us via the internet anyway. Shoot us an email, or just sign up for the wiki. We'll see you at Scav. 

(Photo courtesy Scav Hunt's 2010 blog)