The New Jersey Bergen Record
(Original article online)

Brains, brawn meet on city streets

By ADAM LISBERG Staff Writer

This race doesn't always go to the fastest.

Sure, it helps if you can run a five-minute mile. But it also helps if you know useless bits of New York trivia, or you can navigate the subways without a map, or you can puzzle through word scrambles and other games when the pressure's on.

Urban Challenge, being held in New York for the first time on Aug. 3, is part road race, part trivia contest, part scavenger hunt. Contestants will answer puzzles to figure out the locations of a dozen checkpoints around the city, then figure out the fastest way to get there.

"It evens out the five- and nine-minute milers, and it gives you a 20-mile-wide course," said Kevin McCarthy, the Arizona gamesman behind Urban Challenge. "In the 21st century, being smart isn't about how much you personally know - it's about how you can access all the information that's out there."

McCarthy has launched Urban Challenge by planning races in 21 American cities this year. It works like this: Two-person teams answer trivia questions to determine their starting positions in the race. Then they are sent into their cities with a list of clues and have to make tough decisions about the fastest way to get to the checkpoints, because the only allowable way to travel is by foot or by mass transit. No taxis, no bikes, no in-line skates.

Racers take pictures to prove they have visited all 12 checkpoints in order, then rush to the finish line. An incorrect answer disqualifies the team. The most disqualifications happen among the racers who are first to the finish line, McCarthy said, because they're usually the ones who make stupid mistakes.

"About 75 percent of the teams will successfully complete the race," McCarthy said. "The first ones that come in, they're in a big hurry, and they go to the wrong spot."

McCarthy is a runner and a game buff, which led him to design a miniversion of what would become Urban Challenge for his daughter Katie's 12th birthday party. Kids and parents raced around town solving clues and racing to different locations, and suddenly McCarthy - who owns a cabinet company and a building company - was making plans to take Urban Challenge national.

Urban Challenge held its first race in Phoenix in February, to gain publicity and put the game-day process through its paces. To find their checkpoints, racers had to answer questions about local history, unscramble jumbled words, and even solve a set of algebraic equations where 4y=8x.

Now Urban Challenge is in the midst of touring 19 more cities - a different one every Saturday - which will lead to a national championship in Las Vegas in November, featuring top finishers of the earlier contests. The top prize in each local contest is a free trip to the nationals, and the top prize in Vegas is $50,000 cash.

The race is more stringent - and more high tech - than the scavenger hunts you may have run through in high school. Urban Challenge loans its racers digital cameras, so they can prove they visited all 12 checkpoints in order, then displays the images on big screens at the after-race parties.

The event also has a super-slick Web site at www.urbanchallenge.com. In fact, if you don't have a computer, you can't register for the race. If you don't want to register online, you still have to go online to print out the registration form, then mail it in with your check.

And yes, the creators are developing a pilot for a reality TV show based on Urban Challenge, too. "You don't have to eat buffalo testicles, or get parasites in Borneo, or be mean to other competitors," McCarthy said in an early press release. "This is an adventure race you can actually enjoy."