The Big 49Across

Evan has now been gone from home for nearly a month.  We hoped that the Labor Day weekend would find him packing his bags for home, but alas, Evan  is still missing.  After we reported on Friday that Evan was heading for Atlanta, evidence was uncovered that showed that in fact Evan did fly to Atlanta.  Unfortunately, nobody in town spotted Evan this weekend, so Evan’s editor at Wired Magazine, Nicholas Thompson has decided to make the search a little more interesting.

He has issued a set of five challenges to Evan.  Each day, if Evan completes the challenge and proves it within 48 hours, he will receive $400 when he finally returns home.  The challenges are encoded, as one caller to our tip line this afternoon informed us, (we were grilling out hamburgers on the deck when the call came) in the New York Times crossword puzzle.  Monday’s challenge is that Evan must, “go attend a book reading.”

Thanks to a connection in the printing industry, and a few phone calls, we received an advanced copy of Tuesday’s puzzle this afternoon.  We were still working on 13-down when an email came in from a member of our team, revealing the decoded challenge for Tuesday.  Evan must…well, you’ll have to wait until at least Wednesday to read the challenge, because we wouldn’t want Evan reading it too soon.

Your tips and theories have been invaluable to our team today.  Thank you readers!  Keep the emailed tips and calls coming in (1-888-603-0968) and be sure to identify yourself when you call.  When this is all over, we want to acknowledge the most valuable tipsters here on the site.

If all the information we received today is correct, Evan has likely left Atlanta, and has a good probability of heading straight for TrackEvan Central tomorrow.  Evan, if you are headed to H-town, be sure to stop along the way and pick me up some gumbo!  If Evan decides to take the easier road to the north, tipsters we are in luck.  We’ve got another member of the team stationed at a prominent Memphis landmark, waiting to send Evan packing.  (Evan, if you go that route instead, please FedEx us some BBQ)

For sake of completeness to the story, we did find the crosswords for the rest of the week, but they are useless now in the search for Evan.

P.S. 49-Across was “EASYA.”

September 8th, 2009

admin

The assumption that Evan was heading for Houston (aka H-town) was based on the ambiguous wording in Tuesday’s crossword challenge. Nicholas Thompson has further clarified the challenge, and the probability that Evan is coming our direction is a bit lower.

There is a possibility that we will get the puzzles for the entire week sometime today. This would be a great breakthrough in the search for Evan, and will be reported here if we can pull it off. Stay Tuned.

September 8th, 2009

admin