(For the View From Your Window contest, the results below exceed the content limit for Substack’s email service, so to ensure that you see the full results, click the headline above.)
Chini reflects on last week:
Ahh, the first contest of the year — that annual tradition in which recipients of gift Dish subscriptions are introduced to The View From Your Window Contest with the most, er, challenging view of the year. Yesirree Bob, if you can get this one, you can get any of them. So welcome new players, it only gets easier from here …
It was a hard contest even for the Coloradan super-sleuth in NJ:
Man, these contests are easy once the answer has been revealed, LOL! My post-mortem ritual of analyzing my failures are becoming almost more interesting than the actual contest. This last one was another one where I got 90% of the way, only to fail to get across the finish line. More sage advice from Giuseppe: “the best way to proceed is to guess the country first — it’s easier than you think; the hardest part is to stay the course when your first attempts at finding the exact location fail, to cling to your intuition.” I should have heeded that.
The real kicker is that I was in Geneva not all that long ago, on business, and I took a day off to rent a bike for a beautiful ride west of the city, up into the Jura mountains, climbing up to the Monts Jura ski station and along the ridgeline above the city, before descending back down from Mijoux. Lovely, but challenging, trip.
Looking back on 2022, I got 77% of the contests right. My goal for 2023 is to better that.
Another sleuth on last week:
I’m glad you started the year with a non-impossible one, since these first few weeks have been especially hectic. It’s also just as well that I don’t have as much time to devote to this week’s view as I did to the last one, since my obsessive internet searching about CERN seemed to have given Google the wrong impression of me. Just before the New Year, I was trying to look up s’mores recipes when I noticed that the auto-suggestions Google was offering me for the “how to make” prompt were a little … unusual.
Good to know that French toast is apparently the preferred snack of time travelers!
From a previous winner:
As for last week’s contest, I was hoping to send you some nice pictures from Geneva, but all I was able to find quickly is a picture from a few years ago:
The landscape is so much nicer with the Mont Blanc in the background!
A quick note from our super-sleuth in Lafayette, CA:
Just saying hi and wishing you and Andrew a Happy New Year. As it turns out, a good friend of mine is relocating to Geneva this summer, so last week’s writeup was a great way to get him excited about the upcoming move.
The super-sleuth in Eagle Rock writes, “I hope you had a restful holiday break, Chris — but I doubt you did, given your wanderlust.” Indeed, I had an exhausting but fun week in the Portland area and then another week abroad. (Hint: I was the photographer for the new view released today.)
Next up, a newly minted super-sleuth (a status that’s determined when a player has a contest win and at least two dozen entries):
I have lived in Ridgewood, Queens for about 12 years, and for the first nine years whenever I told people I lived in Ridgewood, they’d say, “New Jersey?” But now that Ridgewood is “North America’s coolest neighborhood” per the Daily Beast, that’s all changed.
Here’s the Ridgewood super-sleuth’s entry for this week:
Is this Taipei City, Taiwan? I think this is another week of being in the right area (like with Geneva and Bumfuck PA) but not quite being able to seal the deal on the exact location. This is an interesting city; there are mountains and what look like mines or quarries right in the middle of it, and the stunning photo of Taipei City below seems to be a very close match (though Hong Kong has areas that look similar). Other clues include a mix of Asian and English letters, and an “-ARY SCHOOL” on the left that has a red cross on it. (Seminary School? Secondary School? Veterinary School?)
Sadly, though, I couldn’t quite fit the right spot. Maybe next week!
A previous winner is also stumped:
I’m so disappointed I couldn’t figure this one out. I couldn’t get anywhere with my clue searches and I feel there are so many! The green/white bus, a few obscure letters in English and an Asian language, graffiti in English, the hills beyond. For the longest time I thought you blocked out a hotel but then I decided it’s an electronic billboard.
Is this Tokyo? I’m sure I’m wrong, and I feel like this was a gimme, but I’m sure I’ll keep coming back to the contest because it’s good fun!
Here’s Chini with the bird’s-eye view:
Another sleuth names the right country:
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