“O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?”

It’s a beautiful late November day in Miami and I’m watching two actors perform the iconic balcony scene from “Romeo and Juliet” on the steps of the Adrienne Arsht Center. Decked out in Elizabethan garb, they are strikingly out of place in this modern setting of geometric concrete, glass and stainless steel shapes. The costumes as well as the dialogue (at least initially) are faithful to Shakespeare and his times, yet the crowd watching the scene in this tree-shaded courtyard pays rapt attention to every word as if they’d never heard or read the lines before. As if they’re expecting something out of the ordinary to happen.

And it does. Suddenly the actors depart from the Bard’s script. They pretend they’re having trouble hearing and begin shouting their lines.
Juliet: “What?!”
Romeo: “I said, call me at my house!”
Juliet: “What’s your number?”
Romeo: “Look it up!”

As the actors flee the stage, we in the audience begin rustling through the newsprint guides we carry.

All this may seem completely bizarre unless you’re in on the fun and know that this is the 2009 Herald Hunt,  a free annual event that’s been going on more or less consistently since 1984 and has been described as part scavenger hunt, part brainteaser (although in my experience it often feels more like my brain is being violently bullied rather than teased).

The quickly disintegrating newspaper section we’re all thumbing through is from the Sunday Miami Herald, and it includes instructions on how to participate along with the all-important cartoon map of the vicinity which reveals the location of the five puzzles. In 2008 and 2009 the Hunt took place around the Arsht Center, American Airlines Arena and the Miami Herald building downtown; in previous years it has been held in Coconut Grove, Coral Gables, South Miami and Miami Beach. If nothing else, you get a nice little tour of a Miami neighborhood you might not otherwise be familiar with.

But there’s much more to the Herald Hunt than sightseeing. In fact, most hunters barely look up from their newsprint guides as they wander through busy intersections. Solving the puzzles requires some serious wracking of gray matter. For example, what did Romeo mean by “Look it up!”?

Well, being experienced Herald Hunters, my teammates and I figure we needed to search for a phone number in the guide. Unfortunately there was nothing so obvious as “Romeo’s phone number” anywhere to be found.

But wait a minute! Mixed in among the genuine restaurant ads on the last page is one for “House of Montague Ristorante.” And it happens to be on “Verona Drive.” Aha! The ad sounds suspiciously Shakespearean. We call the phone number listed in the ad (a cell phone is a critical tool you’ll need), and we get this recorded message, “ ‘Wherefore art thou’ has four syllables. No, yes, no yes.” Ok. Another puzzle.

To figure it out, you have to know that all the puzzle solutions are numbers, and those numbers have already been given to you. They’re printed on a two-page spread in the guide. The challenge is that there are far more numbers than puzzles (there were 55 numbers ranging from 16 to 52,444 in 2009); only five are correct.So what does “ ‘Wherefore art thou’ has four syllables. No, yes, no, yes.” mean? Well, if you eliminate the first and third syllables based on the “no, yes, no, yes” in the message, you’re left with “fore thou,” which sounds like “four thou” or four thousand. And referring back to the guide, we see that one of the 55 numbers in the list is indeed 4,000.

Eureka! One puzzle down, four more to go.

The Hunt begins at noon when humor columnist Dave Barry and former Washington Post Magazine editor Tom Shroder, the event’s cofounders, announce the map coordinates where you’ll find the five puzzles. To win, you’ve got to have all five puzzles solved by 3 p.m., which is when Barry and Shroder announce the final clue, thus beginning the notoriously tricky End Game.

Those 55 numbers are paired with weird and frequently meaningless statements along the lines of “1,142: There is nothing ruder than a guest who actually uses a guest towel.” The final clue plays off the five correct answers in some way and leads you to the End Game’s solution. It’s usually very complicated, but despite that, the team that wins tends to solve it within a few minutes.

I have a friend—a non-hunter—who uncharitably refers to the Herald Hunt as “nerdapalooza.” Ok, I’ll admit there are plenty of participants who fit the nerd stereotype. (I won’t say whether I’m one of these or not.) And there also are hunters who take it way too seriously, showing up with laminated maps from early editions of the Herald and enough Red Bull cans in their backpacks to keep a small, drowsy army mentally sharp. (Again, I won’t say whether I’m one of these diehards or not.) But considering that the first prize in 2009 was a 7-night Caribbean cruise for four people, who wouldn’t want to be at the top of their game?

Besides the prizes for the second and third place teams, there’s also “The Hunt within the Hunt” for children with its own set of prizes. This year the first 50 kids to solve the puzzles received two tickets to the circus. The Herald Hunt is extremely family-friendly and families make up many of the teams.  Several of this year’s winners had the same last names.

If you live in Washington, D.C., and can’t make it down to South Florida, Barry and Shroder also host the Post Hunt, sponsored by the Washington Post, which is next scheduled to take place in early June 2010. A wonderful, unofficial source for news about both the Herald and Post hunts is TropicHunt.com, a reference to the old name of the Herald Hunt from back when the Herald still published Tropic weekly magazine.I could tell you more and discuss the various hunt strategies I’ve gleaned over the past couple years, but I won’t. My team and I intend to win the cruise next year.

I’ve probably told you too much already.