VFYW: Super Bowl Puppies & Poop Rocks

Those are just a few of the fun facts found in contest #450.

(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.)

From the winner of last week’s contest:

Wow, Chris — that news just makes my weekend! I’m not exactly shocked, though, as all the really skilled sleuths have won already, so the inept ones like me eventually luck into winning. I’ll take the VFYW book, please, as I’m glad to continue supporting the singularly fantastic work that Andrew and you do.

P.S. to my Budapest story: my friend and her Hungarian husband divorced after several years, largely due to his drinking. A shame, as he was a really nice guy when sober.

He follows up with another P.S.:

Thanks for mailing me the prize book! But now I have a question for the dog-loving Eagle Rock SS who submitted the Budapest window. (I will totally understand if you’re way too busy to entertain this rabbit-hole kinda stuff, but “Enquiring Minds Want To Know.”) He included a photo he took of a bronze bloodhound statue on the Matthias Fountain with a red arrow pointing in amazement at dog drool dripping from its tongue. With my love of both dogs and gonzo statuary, I went looking for more photos of said Buda Castle’s fountain and found this photo of the same hound, but sans drool:

So now I’m intrigued! Was that cool bronze drool an optical illusion — perhaps a fold in the dog’s ear seen from a certain angle? A serendipitous frozen mini-icicle from snow melt? Wise-guy Photoshop manipulation?

This is how the hours disappear thanks to the internet.

Here’s a followup from our previous winner in Tewksbury:

Hello! I’m mortified by not fully thinking through last week’s challenge. I looked at so many pics of that funicular, and the idea that the photo would have been taken through the window of the funicular car never crossed my mind. What a fun, clever twist!

This week we’re back to the thing that trips me up more than any other: picking a window from a grid of windows.

But he circled the right window this week. The ski nerd follows up by sending photos of a few close encounters with funiculars:

From my trip last summer — in San Cristóbal Hill, Santiago, Chile (the left photo) and Valparaíso, Chile (the right one):

Here’s one more followup — from the A2 Team in Ann Arbor:

Thank you for making so much space for my remarks and memories on Budapest! A harrowing memory I didn’t mention was the collision of two tourist boats on May 29, 2019, in which 27 people lost their lives:

[T]he 135-metre (443 ft) Viking Sigyn collided with Hableány from behind under the Margaret Bridge near the Parliament Building. Hableány sank in 7 seconds. The heavy rainfall and the resulting strong currents hampered rescue efforts, with some bodies found 100 km downstream. With 2 Hungarian crew and 33 South Korean tourists on board, 7 tourists were rescued at the scene; one person is still missing and all others were later found to be dead.

Hungarian minesweeper AM-31 Dunaújváros conducting search operations under the Margaret Bridge

From the Wallenberg Guesthouse I couldn’t see the river itself, but I could see the reflections of all the police lights and boats, and I could hear the sirens for hours. Only the next morning did I begin to understand what had happened.

On to this week’s view, our super-sleuth in Japan despairs:

I got NOWHERE with this photo. The combination of the medieval-looking church tower and the modern and rather horrible red building make me think of somewhere in England. (The country often has surprisingly bad town planning, despite many laws regarding heritage and how towns should look.) The trees and sky are very reminiscent of the UK in winter, along with the unenthusiastic covering of snow, so I’m hopelessly going with “somewhere in the UK.”

Then I’m thrown by the direction of the cars. Though parked, they look as if they’re on “the wrong side of the road” for it to be England. And the sign saying “City Park Closed” feels more American English than British.

By the way, here’s a photo taken from my window this evening:

I’ve come to a hotel by Obihiro Station in Hokkaido for a couple of days R&R, mainly to do some reading and eat nice food in a “calm before the storm” situation, as I’m about to embark on a series of overseas trips for work. Amazingly we went to bed last night thinking “oh, it’s snowing” — there’s been very little snow in Japan this year in most places that usually get a lot, including Hokkaido — and then woke up to 120cm of fresh snow.

There’s been a lot of road clearing all day, but anyone who wants to come in or out of the city has been thwarted by closed roads and a complete transport shutdown. You can see the railway on the raised bridge to the right of this photo: not a thing has come down it all day, which is hugely unusual for Japan.

From our Burner super-sleuth:

My initial reaction was: I’ve been there — Novi Sad, Serbia. But I realized almost immediately that I was wrong (US flag, American cars, ADA sidewalk, etc). I wasn’t entirely off base, though, because the color, roof, and architectural style are somewhat similar to the Novi Sad City Museum:

Here’s the beginning of the entry from the Nashua super-sleuth:

I must admit my first thought was the EU, based on the colors and buildings. But that didn’t last long.

Another gets to the right continent with “Quebec City, Quebec Province, Canada.” The Alaskan globetrotter names the right country:

If you had beagle-ized the “City Park” sign, I think this could have been really hard, since that building feels like it could be in Quebec, Paris, or Brussels. But once you know you are in the United States, the search narrows considerably.

From the super-sleuth in Plano:

This week’s first impression is that we are in a northeastern US neighborhood with surviving 19th century buildings. Perhaps we are near a college campus, if the tall building is a dormitory and the bell tower sits above a library or a chapel. Are we maybe in Brunswick, Maine, near Bowdoin College? No, but at a similar latitude.

I’m actually about 65 miles from Brunswick at the moment, on a ski trip with my girlfriend for our two-year anniversary:

Sunday River, not far from Rae’s hometown in NH

From the super-sleuth on Park Avenue:

This was a hard one. My initial reaction was northern Europe. That sort of “Baltic” yellow paint on the building opposite combined with the steep pitch on the roof suggested Sweden/Norway or northern Germany. But then I found the “City Park” sign, so it’s an English-speaking country, and then the police car, so that could only be the US — confirmed with the hint of the American flag in front of the red building on the left. I spent quite some time looking around on Google Earth in Buffalo (gotta start somewhere) when I noticed the sign for a junction between US 9 and route something 2.

The super-sleuth in Brookline clears up the confusion that many had:

Another sleuth writes:

I didn’t have enough time this week, but it looks college-like and New England-like. The sign suggests a junction of Route 9 and 32, and the only such junction I found was in Ware, Massachusetts. Since my maternal grandmother’s maiden name is Ware, I really wanted to go with that, but I couldn’t find a suitable college. So I’m going with the next college town over: Amherst. (And as a Williams College grad, Amherst is the home of our arch enemies. As our sports teams always chant at games, Crush the Defectors of 1821!)

Chini gets a strong gut feeling this week: “Every so often, we get a view whose vibes and transport you instantly back in time — in this case, to a hundred different trips north for school and vacation ... ”

Here’s part of the entry from the super-sleuth in DC:

Because you blurred the edges of the Route 9 sign (or at least I assume you did), it appeared to be a State Route 9, instead of US Highway 9. Unfortunately, there are 36 states with a State Route 9, so that didn’t narrow it down much. (I initially ruled out New York because it doesn’t have a State Route 9.) The shape and color of the Route 9 sign seemed most similar to Ohio’s, so I ended up spending an inordinate amount of time on Google Maps wandering the back roads of the Buckeye State. I then tried Virginia, whose route number signs looked a bit like the one in the contest photo, but that led to another dead end.

The super-sleuth on the UWS names the right state:

Wow, you weren’t kidding about this one being hard. I’ve exhausted all my (and my husband’s) ideas, so I’m going to throw in a half-assed guess of somewhere in upstate New York.

The highway sign was crucial for San Mateo:

In your denouement last week, you wrote, “Next week’s [contest] is definitely hard.” You weren’t kidding! This week’s was a lot harder than usual, so I decided to keep track of the discovery process and hoped to find the answer by the end.

There should be enough clues to solve this one. There’s a snow-covered city park with unique street lamps. There’s a Gothic-style building with a flat roof and distinctive corner pinnacles, grey stone facade, pointed arches, and louvered windows. There’s a distinctive vehicle parked next to the yellow building across the park. And, critically, there’s a fuzzy highway shield sign showing that we’re near the junction of highway 9 and highway 32 or highway 82:

Given the shape of the highway 9 sign, and the fact that there’s an octagonal stop sign, I decided to look in the US for a highway 9 and a highway 32 or 82. After a lot of searching on Google, I found these signs near Saratoga Springs, NY:

Now, what about the street lamp in the VFYW’s park? Can we find a similar street lamp in Saratoga Springs? Yes we can:

We’re getting close — but looking around Saratoga Springs, I concluded that the window is not there.

The super-sleuth in Chicago looks at a different lamp-post — the one in front of the window’s building:

I confess that I take pleasure in Street View disembodying that lamp-post. I’m sure the next time I see one, I will have to suppress an urge to try to saw one in half, a la Cool Hand Luke:

From a sleuth in La Jolla:

It’s very likely a university campus. The Neo-Gothic tower harkens Notre Dame or Princeton. But looks like there’s a US 9 street sign, which would make it West Point, NY.

A similar guess: “It looks like somewhere on the campus of West Point, maybe the Thayer Hotel?” From a previous winner:

Challenging one this week, but I had the advantage of attending college in the Capital District of New York State, where signs for US Route 9 and State Route 32 are ubiquitous and things look pretty much like what you see in the photo all winter. I started at the northernmost point where the two roads run roughly parallel to each other (maps below) and hit paydirt almost immediately.

Of those towns, the super-sleuth in Ridgewood picks Albany:

Unfortunately I don’t have time this week to devote to a proper VFYW contest search, but it seems to me the main clue here is the Route 32 (82?) / Route 9 junction sign. Route 9 is a BFD in my home state of New York. It’s not 100% continuous, but it basically starts from Broadway in Manhattan and goes through Albany all the way to the Canadian border. Throw in the historical-looking buildings, and I’m thinking it’s the Troy/Rensselaer/Albany area. Let’s go with Albany.

Last week’s winner concurs:

I was feeling psyched after finding Budapest last week, but now I’m back to glum. If you hadn’t left the JCT road signage for routes 9 and 52? 32? Something-2? I wouldn’t even have bothered trying at all, so, thanks.

The red rubber ADA mat on the street curb, the park benches, and the light poles look exactly like the ones all over New York, so I thought maybe it’s Somewhere, NY. And Google says Route 9 in NY intersects with routes 52 and 32, so I felt lucky.

But I got nada after an hour or so of looking at Episcopal church tower photos from Albany, Saugerties, and Elsewhere, NY. So I’m folding and will just guess it’s someplace in Albany (photo looks too built-up for Saugerties) and hope proximity will count. Lame, I know.

The wine geek in SF also picked Albany: “This week was a big swing and a miss for me — a metaphor in anticipation of spring training maybe?” One more bid for Albany comes from a sleuth on the Correct Guessers list:

I’m so bad at remembering to send guesses when I don’t know where the view is, but I remembered this time. I don’t have any more time to look this week, so I will guess one place where routes 9 and 32 intersect. Albany?

From the super-sleuth in Bend:

I didn’t find many good clues, so I looked at lots of photos of Ford Explorer police cars along the lines of the one in the view:

That car led him to the right window — and ditto for the super-sleuth in Eagle Rock:

My first search was for the police cruisers. Man, there are a lot of variations on this terrible theme. Who’s the designer guy who came up with this trendy cop car look? You know he exists. He created this Hollywood-lite take on cruiser signage and then every tough-guy police department in the country ripped it off wholesale. It’s literally like a movie poster. Red, white, blue, maybe some silver to give it a little flash. Swoopy stripes. Drop shadow. All lettering italicized to suggest speed. All on a background of Badass Black. A visual message meant to convey: Don’t fuck with me, bro.

My toddler loves cheesy, Chinese AI-generated cartoons of anthropomorphized police vehicles, which are clearly indoctrination tools (they’re on every streaming service and we’ve banned them now), and that’s what these look like. I don’t know whether to congratulate that designer or smack him on the back of the head.

The super-sleuth in West Orange scrutinizes another clue:

The cathedral steeple is a red herring:

It’s not a cathedral; it’s a Catholic school. But it looks so much like a cathedral because it was in fact designed to echo Westminster Hall in London. Find-the-church-steeple (“the steeplechase”) tends to be a good VFYW strategy for European views, but it would’ve quickly led me down the wrong path had I fixated on it.

The super-sleuth in DC shows the Catholic school in its full glory:

From a sleuth in London:

Apparently St Mary’s has a great hall modelled on Westminster Hall, which is a bit of a jag on my conscience. I swore an oath in Westminster Hall, wearing buckled pumps, silk stockings, knee britches, a silk gown, and a full bottomed wig, when I became a King’s Counsel (then a Queen’s Counsel) fuve years ago. I hope your readers enjoy the Ruritanian image and I hope my professional colleagues at the Bar don’t think I have too much time on my hands. After all, it’s a contest of skill and deduction.

The super-sleuth in Sydney did a lot of virtual driving this week:

This took longer than it should have! I got diverted by Howard University (the red building looks similar to one of their colleges), then the West Point Cadet Chapel, which has a tower very similar to the one on the far left of our photo. Then I saw the sign that says “9” with “JCT” and a two digit highway number ending in “2”.

So there I’m thinking this will be easy … except no! Route 9 in 840 kilometres long. So I started from the Canadian border and scanned Google Maps until we intersected with a road number that ended in 2. And sure enough, our sign is right outside the city hall of [town redacted], which is nicely displayed along with the logo of the police car you can see in the photo:

A big thanks to this sleuth for his VFYW evangelizing:

I’ve sent Dish subscriptions to my daughter in Chicago and my wife in Hinckley, OH, hoping they’ll catch the VFYW bug. So far no go, but I’ll keep pestering them, as they love contests of wits — even with their wit-challenged father/husband.

A newcomer to the contest names the right town, which loomed large in his youth: