Hunt #6 Debrief - Auckland

Hunt #6 Debrief - Auckland
Coin found on 13 June 2015, at 11:41am by Aeron, Emme, Kat, Bjorn & Page

Well. You can't say that I'm not impressed by how quickly this hunt finished. Since last Saturday's speedy find that seemed almost accidental, I've learnt a few things that I can hopefully bring to hunts in the future.
Also, an additional welcome to those of you joining us after reading the New Zealand Herald article! This is the hunt debrief, a regular post-hunt feature where I go over the answers to all the scheduled clues, and reveal who found the coin, and where it was hiding! Enjoy.
-Huntmaster Orion

*Spoiler Alert*
Answers have been hidden inside a grey background. To read them, simply highlight the text with your cursor... like that.

The Clues - Solutions and Explanations

#TheHuntAKL Clue 1 » The West edge of today's search zone inspired a rock song, which in turn inspired a TV series.

Here's a vague-ish one to get you started in the right place. The song and TV series I'm referring to is One Tree Hill.

#TheHuntAKL Clue 2 » Today's magic numbers are 1, 6, 10 and 438.

This might have been tricky to understand, but here's the explanation: these numbers all refer to roads near my location. It is the intersection of Route 6 and Route 10, and is also near Exit 438 of State Highway 1. It's the Mt Wellington Highway exit.

#TheHuntAKL Clue 3 » We're in today's @nzherald! Find the article and take the 7th, 80th, 12th, 216th, 22nd, and 35th letters for your clue.

This was the "Shoutout to The Hunt being mentioned in the paper!" clue. If you found the article (which we'll link to here, later) and took the correct letters, they would spell out S-Y-L-V-I-A.
Now, I knew there was going to be an article in Saturday's paper, but I didn't know what it was going to say. So this clue was only written about an hour prior (unlike most clues, which are written at least a couple of days in advance), as I needed to count the letters while on the train. Oh, and speaking of train...

#TheHuntAKL Clue 4 » I got here by train… anyone recognise the station? http://ow.ly/i/bhLDg

This was simply a picture of Sylvia Park Train Station with its name photoshopped out.
Now, I thought this would be a tricky clue to solve, but as one kind user on Twitter pointed out later, I had left GPS tagging enabled on my camera. So if you followed the link to the image, you may have noticed that it decided to show a Google Map of my location when I took the photo. Whoops.
It turns out that it "may have reduced the difficulty somewhat".

The Unpublished Clues
Still stuck? Before you check the answer below, here are the clues I would have published if the coin hadn't been found.

#TheHuntAKL Clue 5 » Today's coffee break is brought to you by a Gourmet Beef Burger and a Lemon, Lime and Bitters.

I had lunch all prepared at The Coffee Club just as the coin was being found, so you never got to see this photo. You may have noticed the Weekend Herald on the side of the table, there.

#TheHuntAKL Clue 6 » Time for a cheeky something?

The word "cheeky" refers to a somewhat popular phrase on the internet last week, a "cheeky Nando's". Who knows how that one started... but anyway, the coin was outside a Nando's.

#TheHuntAKL Clue 7 » Between two flower pots.

They made the planters here look like flower pots. Nice touch. I was actually planning to hide the coin box inside a flower pot, but there were a lot of used cigarettes in them. Ick.

#TheHuntAKL Clue 8 » 27.7000° N, 85.3333° E. I'm outside and downstairs from here.

By, looking up the co-ordinates, you'll notice that they don't refer to anywhere in Auckland, or New Zealand for that matter. They are actually the co-ordinates to Kathmandu in Nepal. But of course, I was referring to the outdoor equipment store named after the city.

#TheHuntAKL Clue 9 » This is the place… grab a copy of the Centre Directory and head straight for square P13!

"This is the place" was a tagline used for advertising Sylvia Park Mall. By this stage if you couldn't find the coin at the mall, you could use the Centre Directory to find me.

Answer - The Coin's Location
As always, the final clue will always tell you exactly where the coin is. For this hunt, the coin was hidden in the Northern Precinct, Sylvia Park Mall.

Congratulations to Aeron, Emme, Kat, Bjorn & Page for finding the coin first!

(apologies for the blurry corner in the photos this week, something went wrong with the data, I think...)

Twitter Practice Clue
I released a practice clue before the hunt. Here's the answer.

» Dale is about 5 meters long, and has 8 legs.

As @CurvaceousDee correctly pointed out first, I am talking about the Avondale Spider Sculpture. I never realised that Avondale had a mascot!

Unused Draft Clues
In the hunt writing process, some clues get scrapped because they didn't fit in with the rest, were too vague, too difficult, or for other reasons. Here are the clues that didn't make the cut:

» It's New Zealand's largest… actually, not anymore.

This clue got scrapped because... well, I wasn't too sure. There are reports that it was the largest mall, then it wasn't, then it was... that was too confusing to handle.

» Hunting for coins? Don’t call 7958427. Today only, 10am-3pm.

I was originally hoping to put this in a newspaper as a classified ad that you had to find. Taking the letters spelled out from the fake telephone number, you get S-Y-L-V-I-A-P. In the end this got replaced with the real Herald article clue.

» If you're still in the CBD, I suggest you board an Eastern Line train, quickly!

This was intended to be a follow-up clue to the "Do you know this station?" clue.

» If I could only use the letters in this place's name, the longest word I could make would be SPARKILY or AIRPLAYS.

You can probably tell that pre-hunt I was running out of ideas for clues. Those latter two clues got replaced by some slightly better ones on the day when I noticed my surroundings a bit better.
Of course you still never got to seem them because the coin was found so quickly!

Upcoming Hunts
Thanks everyone for playing along! Make sure you stick around, because I'm already making plans for the upcoming school holidays, and the rest of July.
In fact, it gonna be so big that... well... you'll have to wait and see, I think 😉.
As always, if you're following @hunt_clues on Twitter you'll be among the first to know what I'm up to, and if a hunt is happening in your area!

So long for now.
-Huntmaster Orion