What the Finance Industry's All-Night Scavenger Hunt Is Actually Like

Tracy Alloway (0:09)

Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:14)

And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:16)

Joe, have you ever watched something called Midnight Madness?

Okay, it's this movie from, I think it came out in 1980, and it's about this group of college students, and they go on an all night scavenger hunt slash puzzle solving competition, and they go all around LA having these sort of wacky adventures while they compete to win the ultimate Midnight Madness prize. That doesn't ring a bell?

Joe Weisenthal (0:50)

It doesn't ring a bell, but it sounds amazing because A, an 80s movie, B, a scavenger hunt with a bunch of puzzles, and C, going around LA, one of my favorite cities. So I feel like I have to watch this movie right away.

Tracy Alloway (1:03)

Okay, well, I'll give you a little bit of a preview. Take a listen to this.

SPEAKER_4 (1:07)

Midnight Madness, the ultimate game that requires sophisticated strategy. And rigorous self-control.

Tracy Alloway (1:22)

I'm totally gonna have that Midnight Madness song stuck in my head now.

Joe Weisenthal (1:26)

I have to watch that movie now.

Tracy Alloway (1:27)

You totally should. Okay, but there's a reason why I'm bringing it up because on this very special episode of the Odd Lots podcast, we are going to talk all about a variation of Midnight Madness. A very special variation.

Joe Weisenthal (1:43)

So are people actually doing scavenger hunts around LA?

Tracy Alloway (1:47)

Yeah, some people definitely are doing scavenger hunts around LA, but they're doing scavenger hunts across other US cities. And for the first time ever, a scavenger hunt in London. So let me just back up for one second.

Midnight Madness is the scavenger hunt slash puzzle solving competition that became a really big thing on Wall Street just after the financial crisis. It was sponsored by a bunch of big banks, big financial institutions, and you had a lot of those financial institutions putting forth teams of quants and traders, all competing in the name of charity to try to win this Midnight Madness event. Now, for many years, it was held in New York, and in 2018, for the first time ever, it was held in London. And Joe, I'm really happy to say I was able to compete in Midnight Madness, and it was a very, very cool experience.

Joe Weisenthal (2:46)

I'm already so jealous, and I haven't even heard your description of it. It's killing me.

Tracy Alloway (2:51)

All right, so I'm gonna tell you all about it. You will feel like you are there, but before we do that, have a listen to what Alicia Weisel had to say about it. He is the Chief Information Officer over at Goldman Sachs, and he's also a long time participant in Midnight Madness and also one of the first organizers of it.

Alicia Weisel (3:11)

So I started, I rebooted Midnight Madness in 2012 But the important thing to realize is the movie Midnight Madness spawned an entire following of Puzzle Hunts, of which Midnight Madness, New York, was only one. There were all sorts of things in the Bay Area. Various college campuses have them. MIT has a mystery hunt.

So it's the phenomena of Puzzle Hunt, I believe really took off with the Midnight Madness movie. And in the 90s, two college students at Columbia, Dan Michelson and Matt Leibowitz, really Matt Leibowitz was the prime mover along with Dan, they decided to host their own Midnight Madness in New York for their friends. They did it really on a shoestring budget. It was offered for free for their friends. I played all the way through the rest of the series. And then finally, in, I think it was 2008, Midnight Madness 10 was the last of that series of the for free, just for fun, Midnight Madnesses that Matt and Dan orchestrated.

I missed it when it went away quite a lot.

And in 2012, there was a couple of things happening. I wanted to do something different for my 40th birthday. I was looking for a way to fundraise for the nonprofit that I was involved with. And I was very much missing Midnight Madness and this incredible form of creative expression. And I just decided to put them all together.

Tracy Alloway (4:42)

So that was Alicia talking about how he started the current round of Midnight Madness. And I got to say, Joe, you think all night scavenger hunt, but this is a scavenger hunt on a whole nother level. The amount of organization that has gone into these events is absolutely incredible.

Joe Weisenthal (5:03)

Yeah, and I have to imagine given the participant banks, as you said, traders and quants, and the people who originated it, I'm guessing this is kind of a next level scavenger hunt in terms of the brain power required to succeed.