VFYW: Through Yonder Window

For contest #433, watch for flying woodcocks, swans, and Mary Poppins.

(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

I am truly humbled and honored. Three years of on-and-off-again effort for a prize that seems a fitting compensation for the restless and frustrated nights spent at that Hyatt Regency awaiting my delayed flights. 

I will take the book. For a moniker, let’s go with the super-sleuth from Truckee (CA), where I spend most of my time.

From our public art curator in Bethlum:

Just had to say that I really enjoyed last week’s write-up, from the Blues Brothers car chase to carpenter bees to the OK Go videos and everything in between. Sometimes I don’t have the time to consider everything presented, but it’s always a helluva ride. Thanks for curating it all!

From our resident chef:

It was fun reading everybody’s Chicago stories last week. My wife and I are heading there next week and we have a reservation at Topolobampo, where Berkeley ate, and I will try to snag a bottle of Jeppson’s Malört, which the cocktail sleuth featured. We are a bit stymied for cocktails in Asheville because you can only buy liquor at state-licensed ABC stores that don’t have a huge selection.

Another followup, on furries, comes from the super-sleuth in Augusta:

I’m surprised that no one mentioned this last week (though the first I’d heard of it was when YouTube’s algorithm served up that video after I had watched a few SNL Morning Joe spoofs), but the Hyatt Regency O’Hare was the site of a chemical attack in 2014 when someone set off a chlorine weapon in a stairwell during that year’s Midwest FurFest. The hotel had to be evacuated, and 19 people were hospitalized. Here’s a firsthand account by an attendee. No one was ever charged in the incident, though it appears a true crime podcast recently tried to get to the bottom of it.

From the super-sleuth in Clinton, CT:

After missing last week’s view in Rosemont and the previous one in the Chicagoland area (Evanston), I feel utterly defeated, because I worked two blocks from the Hyatt Regency for over five years! But I’ll forgive myself for last week because I only glanced at it and then utterly forgot about it all week … I must be busy. It’s been hard for me to read the weekly results and stories lately.

However, I would be very disappointed if the VFYW became abbreviated, as the recent dissenter prefers. I love that I can go back and read the contests I couldn’t when time allows, and to watch as many of the very cool videos that are embedded — from South Park to music videos to animal footage to movie clips. I hope you don’t feel overwhelmed and stop giving us the full monty.

This week is definitely the full monty (including a Monty Python sketch). On to the details of the view photo, the weekly trio in Vancouver writes, “Our team member who identifies as our Commodore first thought of this when he viewed the VFYW”:

Another sees “Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood”:

No seriously. All I see is Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood — and please tell me I am not the only one that sees that.

Another writes, “The bricks and the clocktower suggest Boston or Providence R.I. (my birthplace).” Another goes with “Cambridge, MD.” From the beginning of the entry by the DC super-sleuth:

The “No Left Turn” sign painted on the street indicates that we’re in an English-speaking country that drives on the left. The architecture and vegetation suggest either the UK or Ireland. 

Another picks the right country:

Sussex, England? No idea where exactly, because as I’ve proven repeatedly, I absolutely suck at this contest. But my first thought when I saw the photo was that Andrew himself took it from his old house, maybe when he was back there recently? If so, what a sweet tribute to his mother.

It’s indeed his native country. Another writes, “At first I thought Wales, due to the slate roofs, so I wasn’t far off in the end.” Here’s the view from Chini:

How a previous winner got there:

After a long hiatus, I actually found one. I ID’d it as England from the chimney pots and left-side driving. And the general latitude.

Another writes, “The photo is from the historic market town of Keswick in the U.K.” A sleuth in Alexandria guesses simply, “Harpenden, England.” And another: “Godstone, U.K.” From the ever-creative sleuth in San Mateo:

I decided to focus this week’s VFYW Reimagined on the pub. Here’s a fanciful pub on the crowded corner of Windsor and Mansell Streets, with an odd, misspelled sign, transported back to the age of the Model T:

Then I noticed the distinctive television antennas on the roof the of the pub in the VFYW. So I thought to create a slightly more refined pub with an anachronistic matching television antenna on the roof:

The super-sleuth in Brookline sees something rotten in the state of Dishness:

I’ve played the contest long enough to suspect fishiness when obvious clues are presented. Although there are many items blurred out or covered by content-looking canines in this week’s view, the text for “The Oddfellows Arms” is strangely undisturbed. Is this a double red herring intended to encourage overthinking? Or is this the gimmiest gimme in the history of the VFYW?

We’ll see! From the CO/NJ super-champ:

Why you covered up the name of the solicitor’s office but not the pub next door is curious. Oddfellow indeed, lol!

Here’s San Mateo again:

At first it seemed odd that you chose not to obfuscate the pub’s name. The VFYW was obviously taken in the UK, and there are a manageably small number of pubs called “The Oddfellows Arms” in the UK. A quick search with Google finds only 41 of them — but not including the one featured this week! Oh, so it’s another red herring?

I couldn’t get all 41 to show on a Google map, but here’s a subset of the 41:

By the way, the figurative use of “red herring” as a misleading clue or distraction dates back to the early 1800s, when English journalist William Cobbett popularized the term by telling a story about using a red herring to divert dogs from chasing a rabbit.

The super-sleuth in Chattanooga names the right town — in verse:

If there is one thing that is puzzling me,
as I ponder upon this window view,
It’s not wherever the window might be.
but rather how many scores’ll solve it too.

The Oddfellow’s Arms do not so outstretch,
as chains do when spreading across the globe,
that a Google search would fail to fetch
the exact facade to match my li’l probe.