Category: Contest

A reader writes:

Unlikely is one thing, impossible another. If someone gets a correct answer to this, there is devilry at work.

Another sees himself in the photo:

I think that’s me in the pink shirt.  Wish I could remember where I was.

Another:

Because no European would dress like that guy in the pink shirt, this must be America and not France (Versailles) or Austria (Schonbrunn). Thus, I go with the one European-style palace in America: The Vanderbilt’s Biltmore Estate, in Asheville, North Carolina.

Another surges into first place:

I knew right off the bat where this was, since I’ve spent many hours racing around the topiary bushes here with Mario and Luigi. This is obviously the garden at Princess Peach’s Castle in the Mushroom Kingdom (Mario Kart Wii). I can even point out the window from which the photo was taken:

Another looks to cinema:

I’ve never actively participated before, but when I saw this picture I immediately was reminded of Kenneth Branagh’s film version of Much Ado About Nothing. I am probably wrong – but in case I’m not, my guess is Villa Vignamaggio in Tuscany, Italy.

Another gets the right country:

The window in need of repair, with the garden looking immaculate, brings back memories of Versailles, France, and the righteous anger rising inside at the excessive opulence, which no doubt contributed to the unrest and eventual revolution. Yes, I say Versailles! Now let me calm down and foster thoughts of Jean Valjean.

Another makes an important discovery:

I’m pretty sure that this will be the most popular wrong answer this week. After a weekend learning about formal gardens, I couldn’t find the location in the picture, but while glancing at the screen, my wife noticed that a section of the gardens at Versailles looks like a panda from the air. So there’s that.

Another reader, although far too brief, nails the city:

Paris, France

Another gets the right location in Paris:

I’ll make this short and sweet because I’m leaving to take my wife in for spinal surgery:

The photo was taken from the far left window overlooking the gardens at the Musée Rodin in Paris. 79 Rue de Varenne, 75007 Paris, France. More specifically:

That’s also the right window, which most of our correct guessers picked this week. Below is an OpenHeatMap of all of the entries (zoom in by double-clicking an area of interest, or drag your cursor up and down the slide):

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Another reader goes into greater detail:

This is definitely France, given the particular kind of molding on the window frames, the fact they are French windows and not sash windows, and the way the roses are surrounded by trimmed box hedges. This could be any one of many 18th century manoirs/hotels particuliers/chateaux, but I would bet it’s the formal gardens in back of the Hotel Biron in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, aka the Musee Rodin.

Another walks us through the garden:

It contains characters from Dante’s Inferno, each depicted in a separate sculpture that Rodin brought together in his Gates of Hell.  In the contest picture, for example, sitting in the fountain is Rodin’s Ugolino before he devours his children:

I bet the family walking down the path in the contest photo will have a great time discussing that sculpture over dinner.  Also, one of the Shades which Rodin later combined with two others to create The Three Shades is off on the left of the fountain. Rodin placed a small version of The Three Shades at the top of his Gates of Hell above The Thinker.

Another:

I went to the Rodin museum in my stumbling early twenties and it absolutely transformed the way I thought and felt about art. Rodin had such a unique and powerful gift for capturing emotion and form, and to be surrounded by so much of his work was simply overwhelming in a way no previous museum or gallery had ever been for me. In particular there was something about the raw, eros-charged physicality of Rodin’s pieces that I practically had to restrain myself from reaching out and touching them:

His impressive private art collection is housed there as well, as is some of the work of his lover and muse Camille Claudel, which truly emphasizes the intimacy of the place. What an incredible, unforgettable experience. Everyone should go.

Along those lines, a few people mentioned the museum was on their bucket list, but none more movingly than this reader:

I immediately recognized the surroundings, as this is, along with Musée d’Orsay and Musée du Louvre, among my very favorite places in the world. Rodin’s most famous works are found in the elegant surroundings of the Hôtel Biron – where from inside this photo was taken – and the surrounding gardens.

On a personal note: You’ve detailed my health situation in the past, as I deal with an eventually terminal illness. My “bucket list” trip while I could still travel was to Paris with my wife last year, to visit these places one more time – and the first time with her.

This contest gives me something to fill my time and look forward to each week, and I would be lying to say that this week hasn’t been a little more special. The memories that seeing this window evokes have made this week’s contest a trip outside of my everyday reality. I’ve been hoping for a win, but this is (almost) just as good. Thanks.

On a very different note:

In the course of investigating this view on Google Streetview, I found what appears to be a lesser known Rodin work. Looks like Jared from Subway:

Another examines the image for more useful clues:

It’s not much past midday, judging from the shadows, a beautiful temperate day, the quality of light, the flowers, and the tourists’ choices of attire, yet very few tourists have chosen to spend this lovely day in this garden. Might that suggest that the garden has lots of competition for tourists’ attention just beyond the hedges?

Therefore we have a garden attached to a museum, probably a museum of statuary, which is probably in a great city. Since it isn’t the Galleria Borghese in Rome, because I’ve been to it, then it must be the Musée Rodin, 79 rue de Varenne, Paris. And the three statues visible in the frame are “Adam” to the left, “The Meditation” to the right, and between them, just above mister pinkshirt, is “Ugolino [kneeling over] and [about to chow down on] his children” in the center of a difficult-to-discern pool.

Tourists avoiding this garden may be a mile to the east perched at a table outside Café de Flore, nursing un p’tit rouge and trying to be existentialists. Or a mile and change to the west at the top of the Eiffel Tower, gazing east toward Les Invalides (and so, incidentally, over the hedge into this very jardin).

I only wish that was how I identified this window. But no. I Googled “sculpture garden hedges” and the 134th image looked remarkably similar to that tri-arch hedge in the background. It took seconds. After that it was just a matter of picking out the panes of the window (not the window itself, because that’s obvious). Ground floor, west wing, south side, second and third pair of panes up from the bottom, on the right half of the window when viewed from the garden.

A reader living in Paris:

I bet this one will get plenty of correct answers. Or, at least I hope so! The tiny bronze forms on the horizon are unmistakeable: Rodin. I recognized them at first sight.

Six months out of every year, I teach drawing from 16th – 18th c. sculpture at the Musee du Louvre, to art students from all over the world, in a private program that I founded myself. I’m American but have lived in France for the last 13 years, and in Paris for the last 4.5 years. My wife and I are both artists, and the gardens of the Musee Rodin are a favorite place to visit. The museum has been in renovations for years, and the last time I visited there was last winter. The first time I went was as a student, in 1994 as seen in this embarrassingly earnest pic:

They are currently hosting a fine exhibition on the influence of Rodin’s sculpture on the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe. I hope to go this weekend.

Another:

How I WISH I could be one of the Dishheads who goes scouting the location of the VFYW this week. This is not just a sculpture garden, it is the sculpture garden. (If you want to mess with all the NSFW-phobic folks, you can post this image, which the museum is using to promote the current Mappelthorpe/Rodin exhibit. It’s effing culture, people!)

Personal story? I first visited the Rodin Garden in 1998 after a term studying in England; my mother and I spent a week touring Paris and climbing all the stairs we could find in the city. Not too many stairs in the Musée Rodin, but I thought it was the most romantic place I’d ever been and dreamed of proposing to a girl there one day. Fast forward fifteen years and … my brother proposed to his girlfriend there. Younger brothers always steal your best ideas.

Another:

As an architect I’ve taken my kids – they would say dragged – to many of the worlds great museums and buildings. Since I never got a chance to go anywhere when I was a kid, I hoped they would appreciate it and enjoy learning about Art & Architecture as I did during my studies.

More often than than not, though, they would just melt down. We visited the Musee Rodin over the holiday break in 2005. To express their displeasure with having to walk through another museum in Paris they decided to reenact the pained pose of Andrieus d’Andre Vetu, one of Rodin’s Burghers of Calais. Oh well, what’s a dad to do?

Another learns to never doubt the spouse when it comes to Paris:

I spent several hours yesterday sifting through approximately one jillion pictures of formal gardens. No luck, although I did learn some gardening jargon (have you ever wondered what a parterre or a pelouse is?).  Just when I was losing all hope, my wife walked over and said “Hey, isn’t that a Rodin?”  I took a closer look at the sculpture near the left side of the circular walkway, but it just looked like a little gray smudge.  I told her she was crazy, we could barely tell that it was a sculpture, let alone who the artist was. Oops.

Chini yawns:

Some of these VFYW searches would take forever to explain, but my thought process this week was pretty short: “Hmm, hedges, looks like it’s gonna be a garden hunt … hey, that statue looks like a Rodin … kinda like The Burghers at the Met, but in a garden … oh wait, it can’t be … <google searches> … oh darnit, it is. And I didn’t even get started on my latte … ”

Another reader owes Rodin a beer:

I’ve never visited here, nor do I have any particular interest in gardens or sculpture. BUT I did once have a framed print of Rodin’s The Kiss in my apartment when I was in college, and the air of worldly sophistication that it afforded me certainly helped with the ladies. Maybe. But it definitely helped tonight, when I realized that those fuzzy globs sort of looked Rodin-esque.

A former winner shows how it’s done:

Attempts to identify the window panes in the photograph assumed that they were above the decorative wrought iron window grill (because it is not in the photograph) and at the height of someone standing. The window hardware barely visible in the darkened left side of the contest photograph places the panes on the western casement of the double casement window (actually two double casement inswing windows as found throughout the museum). The visible hardware includes components of the vertical rod and locking device that hold the two casements shut and is therefore located where the two join when closed. The round component is probably the handle connected to the locking device and vertical rod. Attached is a collage comparing hardware found on other museum windows with that visible in the contest window.

Speaking of collages, here’s another Dish original:

This week’s tiebreaker goes to a reader on our list of previous contestants who have correctly guessed difficult contests but never won. A process walkthrough:

No buildings? No skyline? You’ve got to be kidding me. Google Earth isn’t going to be a help on this one. So what do we know? Looks like it could be the gardens at Versailles, couple of sculptures can be seen but its hard to make out what they are. Since there doesn’t seem to be a lot of other clues, what the heck, let’s just Google: “Sculpture Garden”. For some reason, when you do, you come up with an inordinate number of images for this Spoon with a Cherry in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden:

But the window really doesn’t look like it is in Minneapolis, so what else do I know? There really isn’t a lot there. I guess there are a bunch of hedges. So why not, I’m feeling lucky, let’s unleash the power of Google: “Sculpture Garden Hedge”. And Boom! Just like that. By the magic of the internet there it is. On the first page of image results … it’s the hedge with three arches from the from the back of the photo along with a caption specifying Gardens of Rodin! And so, the Musée Rodin in Paris.

With a three-word Google search, this week’s window goes from completely impossible to getting my weekend back in the span of just 10 minutes! My guess:

Congrats, and with a cherry on top! From the submitter of the window view, an artist:

It’s one of my favorite places in Paris, though nothing like it was in Rodin’s time, when it was more of a pastural paradise in the city. What an amazing place it must have been to have had a studio.

(Archive: Text|Gallery)

A reader writes:

I think I may be on a winner here. The photograph is of the Derwent River in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. The tall building across the body of water is the Hobart Casino. My hunch is that the photograph was taken from the Bellerive or Rosny neighbourhoods near Kangaroo Bay, on the other side of the river bank (but I don’t have OCD and won’t be pinpointing the exact location). I once drove around Tasmania with my family when I was a teenager. It’s a beautiful Island.

Another spins the globe:

This looks to be New York looking south along the Hudson. Maybe Stony Point.

And back again:

Yoros Castle, Istanbul, Turkey. I know that’s wrong, but this is somewhere on the Bosphorous, right?

Nope. Maybe it’s in South America:

I so wanted this view to be taken from somewhere around the Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas in Rio de Janeiro in the shadow of the Christ the Redeemer statue. It looked so much like what I remembered when I visited there – from the high rise condos, to the rounded, partially bald mountains rising from the water.

I looked for hours for the possible angle, but the pieces just wouldn’t fall into place. I searched the Internet for ages to try an located the viaduct looking bridge on the side of the mountain. I looked for the oddly out of place Germanic looking building on the right hand side. No luck.

So, alas, since I have no better guess I will stick with it even though I am pretty sure it is in vain.

Another throws up his hands:

Dammit, Sullivan. A weekend wasted, yet I am completely stumped this week.

My first reaction to the picture was that the geographic features remind me of Lake Como, though the buildings are all wrong. I doubt it’s in the US, especially after two weeks in a row having American locations, though I can’t find anywhere else in Europe that matches. It somewhat reminds me of Canadian utilitarian architecture, but again, I can’t pinpoint where it might be. So I am going to go with a complete shot in the dark and say that it’s somewhere on Lago Maggiore in Italy.

Please: Consider starting some sort of support group or rehabilitation program for those of us who are completely obsessed with this game, but who don’t have the amazing capacity to find the location every week. (That and maybe marriage counseling for spouses who wonder why their lesser half spends the entire weekend staring at their screens trying to divine the clue that will unlock the solution.)

And that’s if you even want to find it:

This has got to be the saddest lakeside town I’ve ever seen. Seriously, it looks completely desolate and deserted. The architecture is very austere, nothing frilly or happy about it. I see something looking like a pseudo-castle-like structure on the bottom right, probably a some sort of hotel or restaurant. The most interesting feature is the ruined aqueduct on the hill. I searched for aqueducts throughout Europe, found no pics of that one. Above it, there seems to be a hotel, casino or cement factory. Again, uninspiring architecture, reminiscent of countries in the former Eastern block. I sincerely hope this is not one of the Italian lakes, even though I did guess that.

Another gets to the wrong lake in the right country:

Precarious rock ledge, Lake Rigi, Lucerne, Switzerland.

This reader, like most entrants this week, nails the correct lake, castle, and town:

This week’s VFYW contest picture was taken from a window in the stunning Château de Chillon on Lake Geneva in Veytaux, Switzerland. I visited it in February 2010 and took a similar picture from (probably) a different window looking toward the city of Montreux:

And here’s a photo I took from the shore in the contest picture, looking back at the Château, with my best guess on the window:

Indeed, many readers were delighted to revisit the Alps this week:

The photo is taken from the Chateau de Chillon in Veytaux Switzerland, looking North along the shore of Lac Leman toward Monteux.  I haven’t been there since the early spring of 1983, but I recognized it instantly.  I remember heading for Geneva by train from Rome.  I was a few months shy of 19.  It was a gorgeous day, with a full view of the Alps coming through the Rhone Valley.  I happened to be out in the passageway gazing at the Lake and the mountains beyond when we passed the Chateau on the way into Montreux.  I grabbed my backpack and hopped off the train there, and walked back to Veytaux, where the castle is located.  I was very into castles in those days, but had never heard of Chillon.  So I just happened upon one of the most beautiful in the world, and on a day that did it full justice. What a great day.

An impressive visual entry:

Another reader:

Wow. Just saw the VFYW picture for this week, and I knew instantly where it was taken. Just offshore on Lac Leman in the Canton of Vaud, Switzerland. My family relocated to Lausanne, Switzerland, for a few years back in the 1980s and my parents brought every visitor, every out-of-town guest (and of course, us kids) to experience the Chateau. How many times did I look out a window like the one in the picture and try to imagine what it was really like back in the day! I was around 12 years old back then, and seeing that photo was kind of thrilling. Thanks.

But this reader trumps everyone:

I didn’t see this weekend’s contest until Sunday evening, having just come back from an afternoon’s walk to Chateau-de-Chillon! Obviously the view is from the top of the chateau looking towards Montreux.

So that’s a hat trick of on-the-spot windows for me. First was a bit further down Lac Leman at Lausanne in VFYW #8. Second was the amazing coincidence of Double Bay in Sydney in VFYW #33. And then today here is a photo of me (on the right) at the Chateau and the boat going past:

It is a great coincidence but to be honest it is now feeling a bit like stalking.

Another:

Really fun one this week. I took a tour of ancient and medieval architecture of the Mediterranean and southern Europe before finding the spot. The puzzle was solved with my favorite image search yet: “switzerland lonely highrise,” which yielded this picture as the 4th result:

Another explains the unsightly tower seen above:

The town you can see a kilometer or two away is Montreux, Switzerland. Can I give a shout-out to the Tour D’ivoire, that godawful 25-story apartment block in the middle of downtown Montreux? The town would look a lot prettier without it, but it was the only easily identifiable landmark. Without it I would still be scrolling randomly through thousands of pictures of alpine lake-towns.

But Montreax has a musical history as well:

A couple of nights ago I watched a biography on Queen, and Montreax was where the band lived in tax exile from the insane tax rates of the late 1970s in the UK. With a 75% tax rate on high earners and a further 15% surcharge on investment income, can you blame them?

I grew up in the ’80s and Freddie Mercury was the first person that I knew who died of AIDS. Up to that point in my life, AIDS was a disease that affected other people – people who I did not know. Actors from my parents generation like Rock Hudson or people in faraway places. I was 18, gay, and deeply in the closet when Freddie died. His death scared the hell out of me. To this day, I still can’t listen to “These Days Are The Days Are Our Lives” without crying:

The video is the last time Freddie Mercury appeared on camera and was visibly frail. It was released on the 5th of September in 1991 on Freddie’s 45th birthday. He passed away on the 24th of November, 1991.

I’m not going to go looking for the correct window. Somebody else can waste a beautiful Saturday afternoon doing that. But I do hope you will post a picture of the Freddie Mercury statue that is located in the town of Montreux and overlooks the Lake Geneva:

Another was also inspired by Queen:

I have read VFYW submissions regularly for the past two years, but this is the first time that I felt a personal connection to the location of the contest photo. In the fall of 2011 I rode a bike along Lake Geneva from Lausanne to the Chateau de Chillon, in Veytaux, Switzerland. I stopped to take the photo of the castle, and my guess of which window the contest photo was taken from is circled:

I made the bike ride on September 3, 2011, which happened to be during the annual Montreux Freddie Mercury Festival. Once I realized what was happening, I stopped my bike to dance to the sounds of the tribute bands. It was a beautiful and surreal bike ride along the lake, and the combination of the scenery and festival made it one of the most memorable days of my life. Now when I think of the Chateau de Chillon, the first Queen that pops into my head is not the one that is normally associated with a 12th century castle.

Another rock fan:

What interested me is the giant statue of Freddy Mercury in Montreux, which is just a bad-ass thing to learn exists. I knew of Mercury’s interesting parentage and upbringing, but didn’t realize that he settled in Montreux (home of the famous jazz festival) and recorded the last Queen record near the end of his life in a studio he bought.

Also of rock & roll history interest is the Montreux casino (the big high-rise sits in front of it), which was a popular venue for the jazz festival and in 1971 burned to the ground when some jackass sent up a flare during a Frank Zappa concert. The event was the basis for the Deep Purple song “Smoke on the Water”, a classic rock song best known (and well-parodied by Kids in the Hall) as being one of the first (read: easiest) songs any kid for several decades learned to play when they picked up a guitar.

And the Chateau has a cultural heritage as well:

While I would love to call myself a first-time player, that would be discounting the many times I looked at the VFYW contest and after 5 minutes sighed in despair over the so much more gifted players. But the last couple of days I just happened to be researching movies that concern the summer in 1816 when while staying with her then-boyfriend Percy Shelley and Lord Byron at the Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva, Mary Shelley conceived of the story of Frankenstein.

So I look at the contest this week and go: that’s definitely Old Europe. And it sure looks like a lake. Could it be … ? So I take a drive with Google maps around the perimeter of lake Geneva and happen quite quickly upon some of those buildings and sights in the background. Which leaves me with some triangulation to do in order to determine the window.

How could it have been anywhere else? The picture of course was taken from a window of the Castle Chillon, which inspired Lord Byron’s poem “The Prisoner of Chillon”. I yield to better players to determine exactly which one. I will say that at first it looked like one of the arrow slits near the water surface on the north side. But then there was this triangular black shape just outside the window… maybe a rooftop covered in shadow? So I’ll attach a guess:

What a rush finally recognizing a view. To quote Geena Davis in Thelma and Louise: Now I know what all the fuzz is about!

Another on the castle:

It was made famous to English speakers by George Gordon, Lord Byron, who wrote “The Prisoner of Chillon”. There was a time when people committed huge chunks of poetry to memory. My 96-year-old mother just recited the following verse to me:

Lac Leman lies by Chillon’s walls:
A thousand feet in depth below
Its massy waters meet and flow;

Thanks for the “views” – and the memories.

Another shares their pic from the same exact window:

My wife and I were there in April and she took a photo from the same window. The window is indicated by an arrow in the attached photo. Chillon Castle dates from the 12th Century. It was built to control movement between the north and south of Europe through the upper Rhone valley. The prison in a lower level of the castle was made famous by Lord Byron in his poem “The Prisonier of Chillon”. Byron left his mark on a pilar in the prison.

Another finds the inside view:

The online floor plan of the museum shows no indication that this part of the structure is publicly accessible, but the window would be above #27 “Clerks’ Room”:

Another used this video tour. And here’s Chini:

Great, so I’ve got the flu in June and some Dish viewer’s running around the Alps touring real life Disney castles. Not fair! At least there was some fun to be had in finding the room where the picture was shot. Figuring out the layout of hotels is one thing; doing the same for a 900-year-old castle is a whole different ball of wax.

Speaking of balls:

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And this week’s collage of guesses:

The winning entry this week comes from a husband-and-wife team that has now correctly guessed nine contests in a row:

Our guess is that the contest photograph was taken from the Château de Chillon, a castle in Veytaux, Switzerland. The castle is located on a small island in Lake Geneva, and its address is listed on its website as Avenue de Chillon 21, CH – 1820 Veytaux. (Yes, these days even medieval castles have websites.) The photograph was taken facing north-northwest. We are guessing it was shot from the turret window circled in the photograph below:

Normally we would specify which floor, but given the history of the castle (a hundred independent buildings gradually connected over centuries of construction) we’re not sure the ordinary logic holds. (Is a turret a “floor”? Do you count the dungeon?)

Our first impression of the contest photo was that the placid waters and the nature of the shoreline suggested we were looking at a lakefront. The rough surface of the window “frame” suggested an older stone structure such as a castle. Combined with look of the foliage and presence of mountains close to the lakeshore we thought of the Italian Lake District (Lake Garda, Como, etc.) or of Lake Geneva in Switzerland.

Going on Google Earth we searched the Italian Lake District, hoping in particular that we would find that the contest photograph was taken from George Clooney’s island castle in Lake Como. (Perhaps George is a Dishhead). Sadly, the terrain was not a match. Also, the buildings in the contest photograph appeared too modern to fit what we were seeing in that part of Italy.

Moving on to Plan B, Lake Geneva, we quickly found the Château de Chillon, and from there the nearby city of Montreux which has a white high-rise structure matching the one that features prominently in the contest photo. Locating the below photograph taken from the Château de Chillon which is nearly identical to the contest photo clinched our choice.

An impressive guess from an impressive pair of players. From the view’s submitter:

I am very excited to see my picture in this week’s contest. I am travelling around southern Europe for four weeks and Switzerland was my first stop. This picture was taken on a cloudy but beautiful day, looking north-west out of the north-most tower in the Chateau De Chillon, onto Montreux city on the shores of Lake Geneva.

This is technically not one of the four watch towers but the view from the north-most watch tower would probably look the same. The Chateau is an island castle on Lake Geneva and was made famous by Lord Byron’s poem “The Prisoner of Chillon”. It is located a couple of kilometers from Montreux, famous for its Jazz festival and other music links. The song “Smoke on the water” by Deep Purple refers to a fire in the Montreux casino.

(Archive: Text|Gallery)

by Chris Bodenner

A reader furrows his brow:

This is a toughie.  A nondescript scene of a generic Midwest downtown.  The only clue I see is the low rise of hill in the near distance, which suggests that there is a moderate-sized river at its base.  I’m just taking a guess with Iowa City, Iowa.  Or it could be Council Bluffs, or Sioux City or …

Another heads south:

I don’t have time for searching this week so I’ll just go with my first impression.  It’s someplace in the USA amid rolling hills or ridges and it peaked economically in the 1950s. I’m reminded of northeast Oklahoma, so I’ll guess Tahlequah.

The West Virginia cities of Morgantown and Charleston were also choices. One of only two non-US guesses:

Something about the VFYW picture this week seems French to me, but not in an obvious way.  I’m going to go with Lausanne, Switzerland in the French part of Switzerland as my guess.  My second guess is Montreal, Canada.

The other reader got thrown off by the photo’s untimely nature:

Totally looks like Minnesota or environs at first glance.  But where ever it is, it looks like fall; so I’m going Southern Hemisphere and taking a stab at Hobart, Tasmania.

The photo looks like fall because it was sent to us last November. (We often have to reach back into our archives because suitable window views for the contest are hard to find.) Another reader heads to the Northeast:

As soon as I saw this picture, I thought: New Brunswick, NJ … maybe the Rutgers campus? Perhaps from a dormitory window? Not that I’ve ever been to Rutgers. And while I made a few trips to New Brunswick back in 2000 and 2001 (I had Johnson & Johnson as a client), I don’t remember any details. And yet it came instantly to mind. That’s as far as I can get. I went on Google Images looking for the graffiti tag MEKAN (still not sure I’m reading it correctly), and got plenty of hits – but none in this “font.” (Which in itself was interesting – is Mekan a real name?)

Another spots the tag from a different angle:

Another reader:

East Stroudsberg, Pennsylvania? I’m only guessing this because I got lost through this town one way, trying to find a quick place to get some food after my wife was recovering from giving birth at the nearby hospital.  Wild guess but I felt it was worth a try.  The place does look likes it’s up in the mountains somewhere, and the buildings seem to have that appearance of collegiate uniformity.

Another college try:

This is a photo taken from the roof of a building next to the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs – the building with the white window frames – and its extension, the Eggers Building to its left, looking out over the western part of the campus and Syracuse University. I am a 1994 M.A. in Political Science alum of the Maxwell School’s Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflicts (PARC) at Syracuse University. Go Orange!

Another:

I have no idea. Feels like the Northeast: tree, architecture, bricks, light. I generally do OK regarding latitude on the VFYWs, so let’s see … Worcester, Massachusetts?

Remarkable guess: the latitude of both cities is 42.2 degrees. But the window isn’t in the Northeast. Another goes with the Northwest:

Finally, you publish a VFYW contest photo of Seattle, Washington!  Even though I’ve lived there for over 30 years and can’t quite put my finger on the exact Univ Washington campus location where your photographer snapped that pic, those orange-red bricks were used to build almost every building on campus.  The extra bricks were used to pave Red Square.

Another gets the right state:

Detroit, Michigan? Only because that looks like a Mekan graffiti tag, and I’ve seen it around Detroit, albeit never on a non-descript rooftop that could be virtually anywhere they sell York air conditioners!

Another nails the right city:

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

*drops mic*

Another picks it up for a bit of standup:

SO easy! I just Googled “American cities with rooftops,” and voila – up popped Ann Arbor! It also gave me the exact window. The fifth floor in the School of Law Building, University of Michigan. How nice to have an easy view for a change.

P.S.  Lord have mercy.  I’m passing this one on to Chini.

Chini and the overwhelming number of the 100 entrants went with Ann Arbor. Below is a map illustrating how relatively easy the contest was this week:

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Thanks to Chas for plotting the coordinates and putting together the composite image seen below. Another reader begins the hunt for the right window:

This was a very interesting contest for people not familiar with Ann Arbor. My starting clues were the tagging on the rooftop in the middle of the view and the twin small domes to the left.  Searching “Mekan” found a number of links to a tagger active in Ann Arbor and Detroit, but searching images for twin domes in Ann Arbor or Detroit was less useful (including churches in the search was not helpful). But searching images for Michigan Theater helped to further connect the clues. It took a while to figure out the the view was looking at the “back” of the theater façade top:

Another gets close to the right building:

I think the photo is taken from Corner House Apts., 205 State Street, fourth floor southwest corner, 2nd south facing window from the corner. It is renting to students, for about $2000-2500, which they assume 2-4 people are sharing. In the background is the Ashley Mews Building, with the white stripe and the black upper floors. The two little cupolas sticking up are 603 E. Liberty Street, the historic Michigan Theater.

Across the street is Lane Hall: “Today, with space wholly dedicated to the Women’s Studies Department and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, Lane Hall is the University’s center of research and teaching about gender. Jointly sponsored art exhibits, a succession of intellectual events throughout the year, and casual social interactions among researchers, faculty, students, and staff have made Lane Hall into an intellectually vibrant feminist community.”

Another adds:

As a proud Ann Arborite I had to brag a little bit about some of the history that’s within half a block of where this picture was taken. The older looking building across the street is Lane Hall. It was built in 1917 and has had many uses – it is currently part of the women’s studies department.  For several decades it was the center of religious, social, and philosophical debate on campus.  In the late 1930s there was a series of lectures called “The Existence and Nature of God.”  The lecturers were Bertrand Russell, Catholic Bishop Fulton Sheen, and Reinhold Niebuhr – sounds like just your cup of tea, Andrew.

If the camera were facing southeast instead of southwest we would see Hill Auditorium – which just celebrated it’s 100th Anniversary last year.  Pretty much every great classical musician of the 20th century performed there.  A documentary on its history just won an Emmy.

And just to the north used to be the University High School – whose most famous graduate was probably James Osterberg Jr. (aka Iggy Pop).

Some other rock history:

Prior to being torn down for the CVS, the building housed a cramped recording studio upstairs. My high school band, Eye Guy, recorded and produced an album there one late night in 1997: Descent of the Astral Canary.

Back to the window hunt:

From a father-son team:

We both took the “Mekan” graffiti as a starting point, something that immediately indicates Ann Arbor. Of course, graffiti can vary wildly, etc., so this was not dispositive. What clinched it were clues dad took from the HVAC units on the visible roofs. In the background are two extremely large-scale units; in the foreground, he adds, on top of what we now know is a CVS, are three condenser units indicative of a bar, restaurant, or other building with heavy cooling needs. That such a building would be directly across from a two-story Georgian Revival hall-type building, and in close company with other high-demand structures, strongly indicated to him that this was a university.

From there, it’s back to HVAC. Those units with visible labels are branded “York,” which distributes primarily (but not exclusively) in the north and northeast. Putting this all together, I started looking at northern universities with Georgian Revival buildings, and started with Ann Arbor. Street views of the campus turned up streetlights similar to the one in the view. Then it was just a matter of finding the right building.

Another building guess:

The graffiti gives the city away, and after a little sleuthing on Street View, the picture is either taken from a room in the back of the Bell Tower hotel or a nearby building.  I will leave the maps and arrows to the experts and guess The Bell Tower Hotel, fourth floor, say room 424.

Another nails the right one:

This is my first entry, and it’s the first time I’ve ever been able to get even a VFYW city correct, so I’m terribly excited! I’m also thrilled that I got to learn a lot about the state of Ann Arbor graffiti in the process, luckily finding another great view of this same graffiti on Flickr. I’m pretty sure the photo is taken from the 202 South Thayer building on 202 South Thayer Street, Ann Arbor, MI. I couldn’t find a floor plan, so I’m just going to guess that it’s taken from the 4th floor, right at the southwest corner of the building, looking out the southernmost west-facing window.

Another 202 South Thayer entry:

Oooh, thanks a lot, nothing but rooftops and a narrow angle on a drab, nondescript cityscape.  If I lived next door to this window I wouldn’t recognize the view.  At least there’s one Googleable thing in it, though: the graffiti on the roof in center frame.  It’s legible, thank goodness, so when I searched for “MEKAN” I found several references to a tagger who goes by that moniker and has been much discussed around Ann Arbor, Michigan.  But then image searches for MEKAN hit a dead end because no one appears ever to have posted a shot of the particular tag on view.

Oh well, so then I tried simple searches for anything involving graffiti in Ann Arbor and I found several references to a place the locals call “Graffiti Alley,” which apparently is a much bruited about local attraction (this video will give you the idea):

It’s said to be next door to the Michigan Theater on Liberty Street, so that called for a quick peak at it on Streetview and Voila!  No more searching necessary.  We’ve arrived: there’s that brick-red monolith, the MEKAN tag, that pair of little white domes that are in the left of the view photo.

So it appears this week’s window is in the rear of the 202 South Thayer Building, on – you guessed it – South Thayer Street.  Six-stories, university property, it houses four departments and is one of the few VFYWs not shot from a hotel window.  I’m going to guess the Near Eastern Studies Dept., which seems to occupy the fourth floor.  Any higher or lower seems unlikely, and since I’ve won my copy of the book already, then what the hell, I’ll flip a coin.

Among the few dozen readers who went with 202 South Thayer:

But the winner this week is the only correct guesser of a previous difficult contest who hasn’t yet won:

I haven’t entered one of these in a few years, but this one seemed doable, which of course means it will be the most correct responses ever and that my success will be meaningless, but here it is anyway. I started with googling “Mekan graffiti,” a pretty long shot strategy, I thought. But that led me to Ann Arbor, which fit with the general look of the picture, so I figured it was worth looking around for the red building with one window at the top center of the view. I finally found it in a nighttime view of the city, and then had to locate it on Google Maps based on that.

As depicted in the attached “Pic 1,” I drew a line from that window to the tree in front of the building with the distinctive doorway on the right hand side of the view, which confirmed that I was looking at a building above / behind / next to the CVS on S State Street:

I then spent way too long looking at the apartment building above the Buffalo Wild Wings – pulling up the property management company’s website, foursquare, yelp, anything to get a sense of which window I was looking for. After thinking for a while that the window must be pretty far back in the apartment building, I went back to my Pic 1 arrow and extended it, seeing that obviously I should be looking at the building behind the apartments. Circling the block on street view got me the address, 202 South Thayer:

Unless this is somehow the first email you’re reading, I’m sure you’re familiar with the details already, but the street view is looking south from E Washington Street, with the apartment building on the right and 202 South Thayer on the Left. I’m going with the third story window on the SW corner of the building, since it’s got to be taller than the CVS, but not by much.

Thanks for a fun, if occasionally maddening Sunday morning.

Let’s see how the winner matched up with Chini this week:

Back when I was figuring out where to go to law school I took a day trip to see U. Michigan. Unfortunately, I showed up on just about the rainiest, dreariest day of the year and chose to spend my three years in Ithaca instead; if I was gonna be cold, at least I’d be closer to NYC. If only the weather had been nicer …

This week’s view comes from Ann Arbor, Michigan. The picture was taken from the fourth floor of the Near Eastern/Judaic Studies Centers at 202 South Thayer Street and looks west southwest along a heading of 256.65 degrees. The pic was snapped around 4:41 in the afternoon, on or around November 3rd of last year, from the hallway window between rooms 4080 and 4028.

A marked view of the window is attached, as are an overhead view incorporating a blueprint of the interior and a view from the same height as the International Space Station, because why the heck not?

The photo was actually taken at 1.07 pm, revealing that Doug Chini is, in fact, human. From the submitter:

I’m thrilled to see that chose my photo for this week’s contest. It was also a great relief, because I was traveling all weekend, and had time to look at the contest only late Sunday night, thinking oh God, if this looks like I might be able to solve it, it is going to keep me up for several more hours, and I need some sleep. But then, it looked really familiar, and I could go right to bed.

I don’t remember what level of detail I gave you when I sent it in, which must have been back in the fall. So this is 202 S. Thayer St., the so-called Thayer Academic Building, 4th floor, the hallway window at the southwestern corner, looking west. Those who get the window right will then also know which area of the world I teach …

Looking forward to many interesting guesses.

By far the most interesting one this week comes from a reader who went window-hunting on foot, armed with a camera. From the end of his photo series:

Once on the scene, it was obvious that the elevation was too high.  The view did not line up correctly with the building in the lower right hand corner on State Street. So, moving down one level, to the sixth floor of the structure, I came upon …

Another Dishhead!

We had a laugh about running into each other and how we were both afraid of security.

From the other intrepid Dishhead:

I’ve worked on this with my daughter – a past VFYW winner and multiple correct-guesser – and since I live in Ann Arbor it was easy for me to visit the adjacent parking structure to check out sight lines and architectural details. While I was checking things out this morning in the structure, a guy in a white shirt and tie approached me, and I figured it was parking management coming to find out just what in hell I was doing wandering around taking photos. It turns out he’s a fellow Dish reader and VFYW contestant who came to investigate the same location I was! I’ve attached a short video clip I shot of him:

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A reader writes:

I am certain someone else will win and get closer, but I just saw something familiar and wanted to at least get the city right with Oakland, CA. I see the San Francisco Ferry in the background, so I have to at least be within 5 miles of the window, right?

Give or take 9,023 miles. Another US guess:

I’m pretty sure that this week’s entry is the Port of Galveston, Texas. The combination of the cruise-ship, cranes, pick up trucks in the foreground and urban/spanish roofs lead me there.

Western Europe?

Reminds me of pictures from my mother’s cruise several years ago of the Hanseatic League ports. Hamburg looks about right, but it has blue tower cranes instead of red.

Or North Africa?

In all the years I’ve been following the contest, I’ve only known two locations correctly and never guessed because I questioned myself. I’m going with my gut – for a third time: Casablanca, Morocco. Something about it looks very familiar, although don’t even ask me where in the city the picture was taken from – I’m clueless.

Another runs through several clues:

The architecture, to me, looks so much like Amsterdam or Rotterdam, and the presence of the single sikh (?) temple in the middle wouldn’t necessarily sway that belief. However, the architecture of the white building near the water with domed corners throws me for a loop. I can understand one such example in a pic of this scope in Europe, but two in such close proximity seemed unlikely. And the deciduous trees in the foreground suggest it could not be the Middle East. I’ve not been there, so maybe they’re as plentiful as sand.

Then I think I have the temples wrong to begin with, and they’re actually Russian Orthodox. Ugh. And I searched for busy ports of course, but then realized I was assuming the port kept going for miles outside the pic. But it could be a small port. Ugh 2x.

Bottom line is I had a choice: (1) look through G-Earth for days scrolling through pics of all of Europe, Russia, and northern Middle East searching, or (2) succumb to the beckon of the 78 degree day outside.

Samsun, Turkey.

If any readers feel like they need a VFYWC support group, give this guy a call:

Lately, my guesses have fallen into two categories: (1) the guesses I have not e-mailed in to you because I was sure they were wrong, but which turned out to be correct (Bangkok; Orlando); and (2) the guesses I have e-mailed to you because I was sure they were right, but which turned out to be the most popular incorrect guess (Gibraltar; Oman). So this week I’m entering a guess I’m sure is wrong: Vancouver, Canada. Let’s see if I’m right.

Another gets closer:

Port Louis, Mauritius. I’m not sure why I thought immediately of a port city in Africa. Somewhere with a sizable Muslim population, because I do see a small masjid in the picture. It doesn’t look particularly prosperous, but there is a large cruise ship in the bay. The gantries at the port are loading or offloading a ship piled high with containers, and I rather suspect these are being imported as opposed to exported. First time participating in this contest, I really hope I’m at least somewhere in the right latitude …

Almost. Another gets on the right continent:

Penang, Malaysia. Probably wrong, but I least I guessed this week.

The following reader nails the right city and country, and he also points out the coincidental significance of today’s date:

This appears to be a northwesterly view of the Buddha Jayanthi Stupa in Colombo, Sri Lanka, also known as the Harbour Stupa, probably taken from one of the high rises along Lotus Road – 10th floor? My guess would be near the intersection of Lotus Road and York Street.

My guess for choosing this view to run this week is because Tuesday 13 May is Vesak Day in the Buddhist world, a day on which we celebrate the Buddha’s birth, awakening and passing into Nibbāna/Nirvana. This also marks the beginning of the Buddhist New Year 2558. The stupa’s construction began in 1956, the year marking the 2500th year of Buddhism.

Here are this week’s guesses as an OpenHeatMap (zoom in by double-clicking an area of interest, or drag your cursor up and down the slide):

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Shown another way, a whopping 86.4% of contestants guessed correctly this week:

Another Colombo guesser:

First time participant here. The photo seems to be taken from a high vantage point somewhere on York Street. Maybe the Hilton?

Indeed it is. A regular player takes everything in:

What did we have to go on, here? A large port, but not a megaport. A reasonably prosperous-looking city. A cruise ship. In the foreground, a mosque? That prominent white building? It looks like a Buddhist temple. Eventually, looking for “Buddhist temple port” we discover that this is a picture of Colombo, Sri Lanka. The Buddhist temple is the Sambodhi Chaithya Dagoba, known as a stupa. The temple straddles Chaithya Road and was built as a landmark for ships. The photo was taken from the north side of the Hilton Colombo. Here is a view from the port looking toward the hotel – notice the Sambodhi Chaithya Dagoba in the foreground:

As to which window the photo was taken from … as always, I’ll guess. 18th floor, northwest corner.

Another uses TripAdvisor to help narrow down his guess:

One TripAdvisor contributor, who provided a view from his window, stayed on the same side of the hotel although on a slightly higher floor, and a good bit further east, so our view is from the west wing. Another Tripadvisor user’s photo from his 7th floor room, while not the same view, provides a similar angle over the trees and buildings, but I think your submitter was a bit higher. Hence, my guess of the 9th floor, far west room, looking north.

Another, like many others, focused on the cranes:

Really fun one this week. Immediately thought Denmark, but then realized it’s a little too run down. Next thought was Indonesia, but no ports checked out at first glance. I Googled “Indonesia port crane” looking for the red and white stripes, and by luck, a picture of that big pier in the middle appeared, with the white dome at left in the contest photo off to the right:

The cranes themselves are from Indonesia, but the picture is in Sri Lanka, which was my next guess as Indonesia wasn’t working out. You can see the contest building in the back center of this photo, just to the left of the cranes: The Colombo Hilton hotel.

A rookie correct guesser:

I am so excited, this is my first VFYW entry ever, despite many weekends spent pouring over Google Earth and ending up with nothing. This is also the first contest that my husband has helped with, which I am sure contributed to my success. He has worked with shipping containers for a long time and is my expert consultant on port cities.

The area has changed a lot in a few years – here is a picture from 2010 from the same hotel (although I am thinking this shot is from the east side of the hotel, and the VFYW is from the west side or center because the Panoramio picture does not show the Colombo City Hotel).

Attached is my attempt to explain: the black lines are the center and outer edges of the picture, with buildings labeled.

Another adds some historical context to the city:

At first glance, this image shows the diversity of South Asia.  A Buddhist temple, a mosque, an Islamic cultural center, colonial era buildings, commerce, and western culture (there’s TGI Fridays in the foreground) all mix together.

Yet the image is also about a rising China. Colombo’s significance as a port city took off under the Portuguese in the early 16th century and continued to be an important trading center through Dutch, British, and independent rule. Today, it is China’s turn to influence trade here. It has invested in a string of ports around the rim of the Indian ocean, including at Gwadar in Pakistan, Chittagong, Lamu in Kenya, and Kyaukpyu in Burma. The contest picture shows Colombo’s South Container Terminal on the left hand side that China invested $500 million to build.  And Colombo may soon be eclipsed by China’s reported $1 billion investment to build a new port on Sri Lanka’s south coast at Hambantota.

A former winner offers a tip for guessing windows:

Boy, you weren’t kidding when you said this week’s contest would be an easy one. Never before have I identified the correct city so quickly!

A note on methodology: As you can see, I have chosen a window in the middle. Why? Because proximity counts, and being in the middle gives me the highest probability of being close to the actual window in a case like this where I just have to guess. I’m always surprised when people choose windows on the edges, thereby minimizing their chance of being closest. Choosing the middle window this way won me contest #199 :) Thanks for another fun contest!

Many readers seemed to have had a great time this week:

Just about the easiest one so far. It was the candy-striped container cranes in that busy port that gave the game away in just a moment or two spent consulting Google image search: Colombo, Sri Lanka. We’re in the district called Fort, looking north from a low floor in the Hilton Colombo.

Out of frame to the left might have been seen the twin towers of Sri Lanka’s own World Trade Center; in the background, that intriguing white bell of a temple would have appeared even more intriguing if our photographer’s room had been on a higher floor: it’s the Sambodhi Chaithya, a Buddhist temple built high over Chaithya Road, straddling it on arches that are unhinted at in this photo. Between the temple and the Hilton is the small dome of Fort Jumma Mosque. In the foreground to the left, the yellow building lit by all that early morning sun is the Colombo City Hotel, and next door to it, Ta Da! that’s a TGI Fridays in the two-story yellow building with the red-and-white awning … my god they’re everywhere.

A reader who’s been to Colombo:

This picture was taken near the Pettah marketplace. The water is the Indian Ocean to the west of the city. The roadway in the middle of the picture goes past a colorful old department store and ends at the Grand Oriental Hotel. The Galle Face Green, a huge park along the shore, is just off the left edge of the picture:

I’ve been waiting for a long time to see if a picture from Sri Lanka would appear as the view from a reader’s window.

We actually featured Sri Lankan window views before – here, here and here. Another reader:

I’ve been lucky to visit Sri Lanka several times lately – I’m just winding up a three-year assignment in Bangalore, and Colombo is just over an hour’s flight away. It’s a beautiful and very chilled out place to visit, from the jungles, tea-covered mountains and temples inland to the beaches and historical colonial forts on the south coast. Colombo’s fun too, although last time we were there it was Sri Lankan New Year so no alcohol was available anywhere. We struggled through those three days, only to get back to Bangalore where no alcohol was available for another two days due to the Indian elections. In retrospect it was probably good for us.

A real-life contest got this reader a little sauced before playing this week:

Short entry this week as I took to the gin after my son’s little league team (which I coach) lost in extra innings in the playoffs. Father of the year. This week you’re all up in Columbo, Sri Lanka. Specifically at a Hilton on the Fuck That I Already Got My Book floor. Some weeks you just win by being awesome at Google, and I image searched candy-stripe shipping cranes against terms like Middle East and mosque and eventually, pow! Some dude’s travel blog.

Get your shirts ready already, Father’s Day is coming soon.

We are aiming to release merch by then. Last week’s victor swaggers in:

As reigning champ I probably field five queries a day about blurry auto-rickshaws. “Is it black and scarlet?” I’ve learned to interrupt, generally before the second “tuk” of “tuk tuk”. “Cause you know that means Sri Lanka, yeah?”

Guys we are, obviously, looking North-North-West from the Hilton hotel in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Guests at the Hilton can dine at any of a not-too-shabby nine (9) specialty restaurants, including the (Asian-themed?) Emperor’s Wok, then belt out some oldies in the Stella Karaoke lounge and repair tired-but-happy to their air-conditioned suite from which, if it’s Room 1714 – and I believe that is the case here – they can look out at what my research informs me is a body of water, some red cranes, and a weird white dome.

No, the only challenge here was getting a shot of the hotel’s rarely photographed north side, but thanks to my friends (and future sponsors??) at Travel-Images.com, I finally found one:

I shall see you again next week.

Wrong on the room and floor number though. Incredibly, even with more than 90 correct guesses this week, only one player got the right floor of the Hilton. Less incredible? It was Chini:

Last week’s view took ’til Monday night to track down; this one took fewer than ten minutes. So it was a weekend off. This week’s view comes from Colombo, Sri Lanka and looks north by northwest along a heading of 340.75 degrees. The picture was taken from a room on the 13th floor of the Colombo Hilton, at approximately 6:27 a.m. (local time) on the morning of April 7th, 2014:

Per the view’s submitter, the actual room number was 1322. Here is a collage of many of this week’s guesses:

Our winner this week is a longtime player with the best overall guessing record among the several readers who guessed either the 12th or 14th floor:

Wow… you sure un-dropped the hammer on this one. Googling “stupa port” for images returned four images of a guy wearing a yellow shirt selling something followed by this image [to the right]. Bingo!

This week’s view is of the Fort Colombo District and port of Fort Colombo, Sri Lanka. It was taken from the Hilton Colombo hotel, a tall rectangular blight on the otherwise stately Colombo skyline (otherwise, I’m sure the hotel is lovely). It was taken from the north side of the building, near the western end, and a bit more than halfway up. I’ll take a stab at a guess of the 12th floor.

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