Probably more well known than this statue is the movie by the same name, Rain Man starring Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. The film tells the story of Charlie Babbitt (Cruise) who discovers that his father has died and bequeathed all of his estate to his other son, Raymond (Hoffman), an autistic savant, of whose existence Charlie was unaware.
Raymond has autism and adheres to strict routines such as always watching Jeopardy! He has superb recall but he shows little emotional expression except when in distress. Charlie spirits Raymond out of the mental institution and decides to attempt to gain custody of his brother in order to get control of the money.
They set out on a cross-country road trip together. During the course of the journey, Charlie learns more about Raymond, including that he is a mental calculator with the ability to instantly count hundreds of objects at once, far beyond the normal range of human subitizing (rapid quantity recognition) abilities.
In one particular scene, a waitress spills a box of toothpicks on the floor. Raymond fixates on the spilt toothpicks and immediately mumbles some numbers repeatedly and declares that there are “246 toothpicks”. You can watch the scene here: (if the link doesn't work, don't worry; it's not necessary to watch it in order to solve)
Toothpick Scene
How does Raymond know that there are 246 toothpicks? He couldn’t have counted them all in that short amount of time. Is it just a guess? Photographic memory? Is he a math wizard using unusual multiplication methods, or pattern recognition? Nobody gave him the answer.
And nobody is going to give you the answer to this puzzle either. To figure out where the cache is you’ll need to channel your inner Rain Man. Start with this pile of toothpicks that I dropped in a rather unusual pattern.
Have you got it yet? Take your toothpick solution and substitute the last three digits in the following coords (not the posted coords): 41 53.XXX, -88 18.XXX.
When Rain Man beta-tested this for me he muttered two, three-digit numbers and jumped in his car and drove away because he’s “an excellent driver.” When I caught up with him less than a mile away at Stage 2, I found him projecting a waypoint to the final cache location.
You can check your answers for the toothpick puzzle on GeoChecker.com. The GeoCheck coords are not the final coords. Use the hints to get the final.
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