Young Writers Society

The Great Birthday Scavenger Hunt of 2023

Love taking a spin around the YWS Forums? I’ve got the activity for you! All are invited to participate in the Birthday Week Scavenger hunt – there’s a blend of old questions and new questions to hopefully put up a challenge for all participants.

Each and every answer can be found somewhere on YWS – some of the answers are straightforward to find and some are going to be extremely challenging. Try your best to find as many answers as you can, even if you’re not able to answer the majority of the questions you may find yourself in the running for the win – maybe you’ll even find out some new information about the site! Just be sure to read the rules below so you are not disqualified.

Ground Rules:
1. Absolutely no bumping or liking of topics that may be relevant until after the contest is over. If such a topic is found, the posts will be deleted, and the bumper disqualified. It ruins all the fun, so do not do it.
2. You may beg, borrow, or steal, but you may not bully, bribe, or otherwise harass anyone into helping you complete this.
3. You may use any means necessary available to you, but may not do anything illegal - i.e. try to hack into the super duper secret no one knows about it mod castle secret base where we keep all the good chocolate
4. You may not collaborate with other users to find answers - this means you can not work on the scavenger hunt in a public pad or write-in.
5. Do not post your answers in this thread.

How to Enter:
Please send all answers to @alliyah in a PM and then post in this thread saying that you entered! Do not post answers in this thread!

Ends:
Please note this event is open until the end of Birthday Week - so the event officially ends Sunday at 11:00 PM (your time zone!)

Prizes:
I’ll be announcing the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners at the end of the event they will assuredly earn honor and glory from their victory. Everyone who manages to answer 5 questions correctly will get 25 points from me. And I may give the 1st – 3rd place winners some sort of cool prize too... I am thinking the prize will be a personalized acrostic or some sort of art.

Questions:
If you have questions about how the scavenger hunt works you can post here or send me a PM. There are lots of questions, so even if you are only able to complete a few still try your hand at submitting, you might even win!

*PLEASE READ THE RULES ABOVE BEFORE COMPLETING SO YOU ARE NOT DISQUALIFIED. ABSOLUTELY NO "LIKING," COMMENTING ON, OR BUMPING TOPICS PERTAINING TO SCAVENGER HUNT. DO NOT COLLABORATE WITH OTHER USERS. DO NOT POST THE ANSWERS HERE. DO NOT WORK ON IT IN A PUBLIC WRITING PAD. THANK YOU.*



1. On what exact time and date was YWS officially created?
2. According to the YWS Tagbook, what food was successfully used to lure the Golden Goose?
3. The storybook crew used to have a special mischievous bird as a mascot - what type of bird was it?
4. Name the five users who have earned a unicorn in the Knights of the Green Room.
5. Who did @Meshugenah vote for in the Monkey vs. Dragon mascot wars?




1. 17 users have successfully captured the Golden Goose in the past, who has managed to catch it twice?
2. How many book recommendations did @SantaYWS's true love send them during the 12 days of YWS Christmas?
3. What day of the week did @KateHardy pass @Snoink on the "Most Reviews of All Time" Leaderboard?
4. Who wrote the most reviews for Review Month 2023?
5. In 2019 the "classified" conspiracy took over YWS with users choosing factions, according to Unclassified's official petition against Classified - who was the first user to sign the unclassified petition? (hint: it wasn't alliyah).




1. Snoink proposed a new piece of decor for the YWS Staff Lounge, how much will this item cost?
2. How many total gifts were give for Holidays in July this year? And what was the fourth most given gift?
3. How many likes does YWS's most liked post have as of November 13, 2023?
4. There are some users that are constantly changing their username. Did you know that the user formerly known as shatteredstones used to have a 6 digit number for their username? What was that number?
5. YWS used to sometimes have radio shows - for the show that happened exactly a decade ago, how many people tuned in to listen?
6. What number do you get if you add together the numbers from those last 5 questions?



1. In honor of one of YWS's Birthdays @Carina made a video of YWS Memories, if you go to 4 minutes and 22 seconds into the video, you can view an absolutely incredible piece of art that I made, in addition to 5 characters that @soundofmind drew. Name the 5 characters and the Storybook they belong to.
2. In 2020, there was another YWS Birthday Scavenger Hunt – what animal did users have to follow to find the clues, and what was the “Final Answer” of the scavenger hunt?
3. Complete 5 of the Quest Game from the 2nd Annual YWStival, provide links to show you've completed the challenges.
4. In 2014, @Nate released a new version of the People Tab which added the ability to see people's Cake Days within the People Updates - name the 8 people Nate thanked for testing out the new People Tab before it was released.
5. YWS has an ongoing joke that moderators are "covered in slime." Right around YWS's birthday, in November of 2020, one of our current Distinguished Moderators made an academic presentation about slime-molds. What was their username at the time?



1. Name five sets of publicly known YWS siblings (1 point for each correct set)
2. Name every Distinguished Moderator that joined in November 2004.
3. On what day did @alliyah reach having 123,456 points and bonus point if you can name the current username of the GM who initially donated 21 points to make this possible.
4. 9 years ago, a cool new avatar trend swept across the site. What was it? Whose avatar still is adorned in this way? Bonus point if you change your avatar to participate in this trendy trend.
5. In 2015 @niteowl celebrated a big personal YWS achievement with us, which two Harry Potter characters showed up for the party?

You know you're an oldie when you know the answers to the hard questions quicker than the easy ones... We'll see if I have time this weekend to put them all together. I do love a scavenger hunt!

I've entered my answers! (Oh my gosh those were very hard to find.)

That was so fun though.

I entered at the very last minute. It was a very fun scavenger hunt, though.

same, Ant! xD might try finding more answers for fun, when i have more time =P

Forgot to mention that I did find time and did indeed enter

Thank you everyone! I'll be releasing the point count in the following weeks - @Rook managed to win, but you all did a tremendous job! This was fun to organize, thank you for participating!