Category: Contest

A reader writes:

Hmmmmm. The fan palms (perhaps Sabals), not much of any other type of palm present except for miniatures, the hint of industry with smokestacks and powerlines in the background, make me think of the area northeast of downtown Jacksonville, FL, perhaps in proximity to Heckscher Blvd, near where I-295 & state 105 intersect, on a heading towards A1A (my favorite state highway in the US today!). If so, I’m glad the photographer caught it during a time of relatively few industrial explosions – looks more appealing then.

Another is apathetic:

This has got to be one of the most uninteresting and mundane views you’ve featured in a contest. The palm trees, flat terrain and mountains in the background appear to be Southern California, and I’ll be a little more specific to guess the L.A. Basin somewhere. But beyond that, I don’t really care.

The views are only as good as the submissions. Another reader:

Palm trees, red curbs, and it sure looks better than today in Minnesota! Hawaii?

Another:

I really don’t know. The vibe is definitely Southeast US – the buildings, the parking lot, the vegetation, to me it looks like any number of small cities in Florida. But the distant cranes and smoke stacks suggest a major port. Could it instead be Georgia? South Carolina? Can’t make out the license plates. Without the skills of many of your contestants, I’m afraid I’m going to have to just guess – how about Charleston, SC?

Nope, the other coast:

This has got to be southern California! Wide parking spaces, GM work van, yellow Prius taxis, combined with palm trees, smog, and mountains faintly visible in the background. What looks like a refinery or chemical processing plant in the background makes me say an area like Long Beach or El Segundo, but I don’t have the time to be a superguesser!

California it is. Another reader:

If I google one more California oil refinery I’m going to end up in GITMO, so I’m giving up. Guessing Huntingdon Beach because their parking lots have those double-line bay dividers and the diamond-shaped islands of shrub, but the distant industrial thing doesn’t seem to match.

Another gets on the right track:

The van and large pickup in the parking lot makes it the U.S.A. The combination of palm trees and eucalyptus trees makes it Southern California. The dark line across the horizon might be mountains, but I don’t think so – I think it’s a marine layer fog bank, and the camera wasn’t pointed toward the mountains. In the background you can make out both refinery towers and port cranes. That puts it somewhere near the ports of Los Angeles–Long Beach, probably the “South Bay” area: Torrance, Wilmington, San Pedro, somewhere like that. I didn’t try to explore it down to the street level.

Another gets the right city:

A completely nondescript yet very typical place in Southern California. The industrial background + a lack of visible landmarks rules out a large number of places in the LA basin but does not help me zero on a particular location. Judging by the shadows, the photographer is facing NNE, yet the mountains are far. So I’ll just guess Torrance.

Another nails the right building:

When I looked at this week’s contest photo, my first reaction was: “Wow, this is easy.” Eucalyptus trees and palm trees and an oil refinery all in the same picture? Smoggy mountains in the distance? This pretty much has to be somewhere in Southern California.

But it was only when I looked more closely at the photo that I realized just how easy it was (at least for me). You see, this is my hometown, Torrance, in the South Bay area of greater Los Angeles. The tallish building in the center of the photo is the Golden West Tower, an apartment complex for seniors built back in the 1970s. (As a child I watched the construction of that building from my second-floor bedroom window.) The refinery in the background is an Exxon Mobil facility (which exploded at least twice during my childhood.) The photograph was apparently taken from the Torrance Marriott South Bay Hotel, located just to the north of the Del Amo Fashion Center on Fashion Way. The person who took the picture is on the north side of the hotel looking to the northeast (you can just make out the San Gabriel Mountains in the haze on the horizon).

A wider view:

Another reader:

Ordinarily I try to send in some interesting tidbit about the places in the picture. But this week’s searches turned up a different type of results. The picture features a large ExxonMobile refinery that was evacuated last year and the Golden West Tower apartment building for seniors where an 80 year old resident committed a double murder-suicide in 2012. Oil and gun violence. A very American landscape.

Another adds, “I thought about calling up the hotel and asking about their room numbering scheme, but that just seemed creepy.” Another ventures a guess at the room number:

I finally got one. I have been reading your blog for years now and am going to join right away. Usually the contests are in some far off place, but this one is in my backyard. The photo in this week’s contest is taken from the Torrance Marriott Hotel. The only lower floors that have balconies are the 3rd and the 4th. So my best guess is Room #337.

Another:

Hi! Founding and renewing member here.  So, I fire up the page, see the picture, turn to the wife and say “I know that building!” My grandparents lived in that large building in the ’70s. When I was a kid, we’d drive up from San Diego about every couple of months for a visit and have lox and bagels for breakfast and later go to the coffee shop around the corner for dinner. Every time. They were also the first and only people I knew that were actually afraid of the microwave oven. I could tell you more about them and my visits but I believe that’s a different contest. Now for the guessing: 6th floor, room 622.

So close. The winner was the only reader to correctly guess the room:

Well this just screams Los Angeles. But where? The real clue in finding the exact location was the refinery in the distance. The obvious first choice was the Exxon-Mobil refinery in Torrance. A quick search of hotels in the area turned up the Marriott at 3635 Fashion Way, Torrance, CA.

Now to guess the room number (argh). It looks like the floor is just above tree level, so it’s probably the sixth or seventh floor. I’ll go with the sixth floor. I can pinpoint the room visually, but I couldn’t turn up a floor plan to be sure of the room number. Taking a guess as to the numbering scheme, I’ll go with 629 (608, 607 and 630 would be my alternatives).

Thanks for an easy one this week. St Paul drove me nuts last week.

From the submitter:

I’m not sure if this one will be too easy, given that you certainly have many followers in Southern California, but I showed it to my husband, who grew up here in Los Angeles in the South Bay, and he didn’t recognize it, so here goes. That building in the distance is of no particular significance, by the way (it’s a retirement community), except that there was a murder-suicide there a couple of years ago, something that sadly is not unheard of in retirement homes. In the farther distance you can see the Exxon Mobil Refinery, and beyond that, mountains.

I had to spend a good part of the weekend chaperoning students from my school who were attending the Junior Statesmen of America Winter Congress that was being held at the Torrance Marriott. This photo was taken at about 11 am on Sunday, February 16 from room 629.

(Archive)

A reader writes:

First-time guesser, and I know this will not be a winning entry, but I figure I ought to throw my hat in the ring. The dumpster in the foreground looks American, but seeing as 49 out of 50 states (something I overheard, not sure of veracity) currently have snow, the only thing that could narrow it down would be the large lattice style radio tower in the background. Since I have two-year-old twins, I don’t have hours to spend on Google Maps. There is a list of lattice style radio towers on Wikipedia, however, and in light of Michael Sam’s recent announcement and your tendency to have thematic locations in the contest, I’m going to guess Kansas City, Missouri.

Another:

Once a “Winter Wonderland” (it’s Michigan’s state motto), this depressing shot has to be of one of the many bleak cities in the auto-industry decimated region of lower Michigan. Completely flat landscape, old Sears Roebuck building, little outdoor activity … might be Lansing, Dearborn, Battle Creek. Let’s go with Flint.

Another:

This was a really tough one. The extended weekend made it even harder (this is a Monday/Tuesday activity for me). Using the satellite dishes and the little bit of skyline in the upper left-hand corner, you know it’s a few miles northeast of a major city. Given the state of disrepair, I was leaning toward Detroit, but I can’t find any close-in industrial areas. Anyways, with the style of the triangle building and a strange feeling that I’ve seen that warehouse before, I’m going to guess Baltimore.

Another:

This is a wild guess. Today is the one-year anniversary of the meteor strike in Chelyabinsk, and it would be like you to feature them in the VFYW contest. But I have no idea how to find the building. I can’t find a large radio tower in Chelyabinsk in Google Earth. But yeah, that’s totally Chelyabinsk.

Another adds, “How frustrating is it that we can map the cosmic background radiation of the observable universe but we couldn’t see a huge meteor coming at us from the direction of the sun until it was streaking through our freaking atmosphere?” Another reader:

Omigod, omigod, omigod! This is Atlanta during one of the recent ClusterFlakes. It was taken in the the Old Fourth Ward, towards the former Sears warehouse (which became City Hall East and is now being redeveloped into lofts). The building on an angle is The Masquerade, a music venue, and next to that you can make out the Beltline, the amazing rails-to-trails (actually concrete bike and walking paths) that will someday ring the inner city.

The first ClusterFlake, three weeks ago, shut the city down for three days, but not on purpose. For the next storm, which occurred last week, the state leaders decided the best response was to shut the city down again for three days, but they mostly skipped the fun camping-in-your-car part this time.

Another:

Ah, some snowy big city in Yankeedom.  Atlanta, maybe?  (Finally the country is united.) But seriously, looks like somewhere on the southeast side of Chicago.

It is in the Midwest. Another gets the right city:

Holy crap I know this!!

I don’t care enough to look it up to the exact cubic meter or whatever those people do, but this is in St. Paul, Minnesota (just at the Minneapolis/St. Paul city line, actually). It’s on the south side of University Avenue, between Raymond and Pelham, looking west. This picture was probably taken from the new condos being built there. You can see our new light rail transit track headed down the middle of University – it’s supposed to open in July. I work in a building just one block east of this. I wonder how many of my colleagues and friends will write in?

Clearly this picture was chosen because the winning goal in the USA-Russia hockey game today was scored by Minnesotan T.J. Oshie, right?

Well duh; everyone knows Oshie is from Warroad, MN. Another reader:

When I opened the picture my reaction was: “Hmmmm.  Not much to go on … wait that’s the Witch’s Hat Tower. Oh, I live here.”  Well, I don’t live there as in inside the tower, but I do live in Minneapolis, so that landmark (the cone shaped tower partially obscured by the large building in the foreground) is instantly recognizable.  The photo is taken mere yards across the border into St. Paul looking west toward Minneapolis’ Prospect Park Neighborhood and the University of Minnesota.  I believe the photo is taken from the Chittenden and Eastman Building, which has been redeveloped into the C&E Lofts. The address is 2410 University Ave, St Paul, MN 55114.

I’ve won recently, so I won’t spend any time trying to guess which precise window.  But here’s some fun trivia: The Witch’s Hat Tower is rumored to be the inspiration for Bob Dylan’s song “All Along The Watchtower.”

Another sends the above image of the tower. Another reader:

When I was a toddler growing up in Twin Cities, we used to drive by that white tower. I never knew its name, but my folks would tease me that an old hag lived up there, peering out from under the dark “hat” to surveil the traffic for naughty children. I would crouch under the back seat of our Oldsmobile station wagon until the tower was well out of sight. I’m not sure they understood how disturbing that little story was to a 5 year old, but it has stuck with me for over 35 years!

Another with local ties:

I interned on the campaign of the late Paul Wellstone across the street from this location in the summer of 2002. I will never forget that neighborhood. Now I sit in Austin, Texas getting occasionally homesick for St. Paul – this view brought me home again, if only for a few minutes. Thanks for sharing it.

Another:

The street that runs diagonally across the right side of the photo is University Avenue – there’s a new light rail line that goes down the street that will be open in a few months. There’s also a low office building near the center of the photo that was the campaign headquarters for Al Franken’s Senate campaign in 2008.

Another turns back to the building in question:

The Chittenden and Eastman Building, a furniture showroom and manufactory, was built in 1917 in a part of Saint Paul zoned for industry. One of its last tenants, Nelson Office Supply, displayed desks and office furniture; long after that enterprise closed, its sign lingered on. In the ’60s and ’70s, the industry moved to the suburbs, and the low rents and warehouse space attracted artists, musicians and poets.

Over the past two years, University Avenue (the main drag in the center of your VFYW photo) has been under construction. A light-rail system has been installed (“the central corridor”) to join Saint Paul and Minneapolis, and a number of rundown warehouses along the route – the Chittenden & Eastman building among them – have been converted to apartments. In one of the attached photos [seen above], you can see the old building and the ripped up street. The second photo – just one google click from the previous one – shows the Chittenden & Eastman with a new lease on life as C&E Lofts, with many, many new windows:

Another leaves the exact location to chance:

VFYW is always so intimidating so I usually just glance at the picture and wait until the winner post, but this time I actually recognized the area! All of it, the Green Line LRT, the tv/radio tower, the witch hat water tower, the cool shaped building, and downtown Minneapolis to the far left. It has to be University Avenue in St. Paul where it intersects with 280. I sent an email to my brother to confirm, but he tells me that I need more than a guess. With his help we narrowed it down to C&E Lofts at 2410 University Ave. St. Paul, MN. His guess is apt. 410, mine, apt. 510. In true sibling fashion we flipped a coin. Apt. 410 it is!

510 actually!  Two readers guessed the right apartment number:

Normally I spend about 5 minutes on the VFYW contest and give up, but when I saw this week’s contest I knew it had to be the Twin Cities. The sky, the huge pile of snow in the parking lot, the steam coming off the smoke stacks … it all screamed MSP, my hometown. Next, I noticed the dividers on the street that are part of the new light rail system. That probably places it on University Ave. Aha! That radio tower is KSTP, and the real give-away is the Witch’s tower that sites atop a hill blocks from the house where I grew up. Now I know it’s at the intersection of University and Franklin, and a couple reference points clearly show it’s the C&E Lofts building at 2410 University Ave. Specifically, it’s from the southern-most window:

The only question, then, is which floor? At first I assumed it was the top level, but after referencing Street View I’m reasonably certain it’s the 5th floor. The window, then, is the kitchen window (as opposed to the living room) in unit 510. You can’t get much more specific than that.

Indeed you can’t, but to break the tie this week, we had to check how many previous contests the two 510 guessers have entered. The above reader was a first-time player, but the following reader has played once before, so he’s the winner this week:

Every Saturday my wife and I check out the view from your window contest and list off a guess, that is at minimum 500 miles, if not a continent or two away. This week, due to a change in our routine, I didn’t pull up the post until Sunday evening. My first impression was “just like it is here (in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area) snowy and it looks cold.” While it has been cold throughout the country, the only word to describe it here this season is brutal. Then I saw the light rail line in the middle of the street and thought that it looked like the new divider that they were putting in the for the new Green Line light rail between Minneapolis and St. Paul. From there it all fell into place.

Back in graduate school at the University of Minnesota, I took a bus that went down that very street every day between the Minneapolis and St. Paul campuses. I used to see the unusual triangle shaped building and used to think it was an incredibly odd shape for a building. Directly ahead in the view you can faintly see the broadcast tower for KSTP television (local channel 5). On the very upper left edge you can see some of the skyscrapers of Minneapolis, poking above the red Court International building of 2550 University Avenue.

The building is the Chittenden and Eastman company building located at 2410 University Ave West in St Paul. The building’s history is as follows: The building was erected by M. Burg and Sons as a furniture showroom and warehouse. In 1927 they were joined by another furniture manufacturer, the Chittenden & Eastman Company. In the 1950s the building became widely known as the Chittenden & Eastman Building. Over time the C & E Building has been home to other furniture stores and offices. Beginning in 2011 the building was converted into apartments.

I have attached a Google street view photo of the front of the building from the summer which shows the light rail track construction underway:

To get the view that you see in the photo, the window would need to be in the back corner (SW corner) of the building. The windows from that unit would face NW towards Minneapolis. To get the unit and angle I was able to find a floor plan of the building on the C&E Loft’s website. From everything I can tell, the location is unit 510

An exterior photo of the building with the submitter’s window is circled:

Hopefully from everything I’ve written, I’ll be the winner! I have read from week to week of all the people who can get this, and it astounds me. At least I can now say I’ve gotten the location once! Thanks for the great blog and the weekly contest, and don’t worry, I’m a subscriber and I’ve renewed!

(Archive)

A reader describes the scene:

High-rise condos, barren trees, snow everywhere, a run-down brick building with graffiti on it. It could be any of the North Jersey bedroom communities across the Hudson from New York. I’m going with Fort Lee because it’s been in the news so much recently.

The window is themed on a recent news story, but not Bridge-gate. Another reader:

West Berlin, Germany. The graffiti: (“stark” = strong, mighty). Neighborhood: Lubensdorf. 9th floor, Rechenberger apartments …

A Game of Thrones fan weighs in:

WINTERFELL, SEVEN KINGDOMS. Graffiti (“Stark”) gives it away, obviously.

Based on the relatively low number of entries this week, this reader wasn’t alone:

Oh my lord. How can anyone win this contest?? And then you have those damn tree branches covering that sign on top of the building!

Another:

That logo at the right looks soooo familiar, but my darned middle-aged memory won’t help identify it. So let’s call this the untouristed Basel, outside the center but near the Rhine.

Another:

The Bronx, no thonx. Although I know it intimately, I have never seen that sign on the right nor that hi-rise cantilevered structure in four parts. But to a native, it’s the first thought that comes to mind – and it seems impossible that it can be anywhere else on Earth.

Another:

Obviously, the key to this one is figuring out the logo obscured by the trees off to the right. Turns out, a LOT of companies have logos with stylized “P”s (or is that a rho?). Probably North America, far enough north for snow (so not Florida) and in a city with a lot of recent-vintage construction. The crisp blandness of the highrises screams Belltown, Seattle, to me, though I cannot pin down the exact location. Most likely because I’m wrong. But after all those P logos I just can’t bring myself to slog through Google images of “boring high rise condo buildings”.

Another gets the right country:

Well, I’m making a guess that’s a 180 from my original thoughts. At first glance it looks like my neighborhood on Chicago’s north side; the snow cover is just about right but the buildings are not familiar, and what is that logo on the building to the right? Perhaps another North American city, in Canada perhaps?

But I finally identified the logo using Google search: it’s from Rostelecom, the Russian long-distance service. It would be too predictable for it to be Sochi (it probably doesn’t have snow anyway) so I’ll go with a nice Baltic town like St Petersburg. But then where are the Soviet era buildings and why the American style grafitti? Still looks a lot like Chicago.

Another is more definitive about Russia:

Moscow. I’m not watching the Sochi Olympics but I’m sure anyone who is has seen that Cyrillic letter P everywhere. It an interpretation of an ear and belongs to Rostelecom, Russia’s leading long-distance phone company. I have scoured the web for images of the buildings in the distance in Russia with no luck.

Another nails the correct city:

For several months I’ve just given up without trying (there wouldn’t be enough to go on in a given view to justify the head banging that would accompany the futile search), but this week’s view offered a couple of clues that tempted me back in:

A quartet of distinctive glass skyscrapers together with a sign, obscured by a tree but just legible enough to indicate it was probably Cyrillic. Thus probably Russia, but probably not Sochi, because it’s not your style to be so obvious. Anyway, a quick couple of Google image searches for similar building in Russia bore fruit: about 360 miles north of Sochi in the port city of Rostov-na-Don.

I then spent a pleasant hour or so touring the locale and nailing down the quasi-exact address, which is on Pushkinskaya (maybe 173b or nextdoor), seemingly on the campus of Ростовский базовый медицинский колледж (Rostov Medical College). It’s just southwest of the public library (the brick monolith to the left in the view), across Pushkinskaya from Rostelecom (the building with the blue sign to the right), and about a block and a half northwest of the Rostov City Towers (the glass buildings in the background). Thankfully, having won once already on contest #143, I don’t feel the need to drill any deeper to get this specific window. But it was fun to be back in the game.

Another imagines an Olympics tie-in:

I am guessing the person who sent this in was a ski jumper, injured in his warm-ups for the Sochi games and airlifted to Rostov-na-Donau for treatment. Specifically: Rostovskiy Bazovyy Meditsinskiy Kolledzh. Rostov-na-Donu, Pushkinskaya ul., 173b:

I’m going to go with the fourth floor. I could not find a picture of the clinic, and it probably only has three floors.

Another Rostov-na-Don entry:

I wanted to tell you that since winning my very own VFYW book a couple years ago (back when the competition wasn’t quite as fierce), I’ve taken to posting the weekly contest photo on my Facebook wall to let my friends have a go at it. There is a small but determined group of us who tackle the contest each week, and I announce the winner, same as you, only among a smaller pool of brilliant people. One of my friends won your contest about two months ago.

Another regular player was stumped until turning on the TV:

I ignored my family all day Saturday with little to show for it, ultimately narrowing it down to Canada, England, China, Philadelphia, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Poland, or Austria. Maybe the Netherlands or South Korea, or Japan. The vast majority of companies I could find that ended in ‘-kom’ were in Eastern European countries. Then, watching the Olympics and considering how Sochi is spelled in Russian: Cyrillic alphabet. I found Rostelecom. Maniacal laugh: Rostov-on-Don, Russia. I’m going to guess the picture was taken from this window:

The smaller yellow building in front of it is part of a medical school, the website listing it as at 173-б (letter between A and B in the Russian alphabet). Google Maps includes the pic site as part of the college.

So after all this, Russia during the Sochi Olympics, huh?

Another hears our own maniacal laugh:

So I was expecting an easy one this week after a tough one last week. But no. You had to be especially evil and pick a view not from the obvious Sochi, but from a city just 250 miles away. The view this week comes from Rostov-on-Don, Russia, specifically the Rostov Medical College.

I identified the country fairly fast by figuring out what the sign above the building across the street said. I couldn’t read it through the trees other than P______KOM, but the logo was distinctive enough. Making a mock-up of the logo (attached), a Google image search identified it as belonging to Rostelecom, a Russian phone company. While they have offices outside of Russia, the sign was clearly written in Cyrillic, so I knew the country then.

I expected identifying the city would be easy. and I figured all I had to do was find the correct Rostelecom office building. Sochi was my first guess, but no, that wasn’t it. It wasn’t Moscow, Saint Petersburg or a dozen other major cities either. So then I had to turn to other clues in the picture.

The next big clue was the graffiti on the brick building in the foreground. It clearly says STARK, which I don’t think is Russian. It is the German word for strong though. This led me to research cities in Russia with large German populations (thanks to Wikipedia), but I still couldn’t find the right one.

Looking at a map then, I noticed Volgograd (one of the German cities) was fairly close to Sochi, so this put me on the “Andrew is being evil” track. Looking at nearby cities, I checked out Rostov-on-Don and bingo, that’s where the Rostelecom building was. Identifying other landmarks in the view was easy after that. Across the street from Rostelecom is the Medical School. All the street views are obscured by trees, but the satellite view makes it clear where the window is. The view is just south of due east and I’m guessing it’s on the 4th floor:

Another gets the exact address:

Unfortunately, Street View does not provide enough information for me to certify its exact address. It looks like the yellow brick building is #173 Pushkin St. (a medical college). But the building behind it, #171, frustratingly lacks description on Google Maps. However, a search of the Cyrillic address “171 пушкинская улица Ростов-на-дону” brings up a host of residential advertisements for this location. This website says that this building has 5 floors and 40 apartments. So, I’ll guess 3rd floor. No idea about apartment number, though.

The winner this week is the only Correct Guesser (of a previous difficult contest) to guess the right floor:

Cold in the winter (snow), hot in the summer (window air conditioners).  The P sign didn’t look like the Latin alphabet, and guessing it could be Cyrillic in a nod to the Olympic Games in Russia, I Googled and found a list of companies in Russia on Wikipedia, which led to Rostelecom.  Googling Rostelecom’s regional branch office locations, I picked the southeast one in Rostov, which is close-ish to Sochi (a guess, as a nod to the Olympics, but also the southeast area would be a place with cold winters and hot summers).

The Google Map for Rostelecom in Rostov led me to the right place, confirmed the tall building and group of four in the background, but the limited Street View and abundance of trees made it difficult to narrow down the correct window where the photo was taken.  The little dormer windows on the roof next door leads me to guess 171 Pushkinskaya St, Rosotov, Russia.  Northeast side of the building.

Which floor?  Well, the Rostelecom building is 7 stories high, and the view is not as high up as that (the view doesn’t rise over tree height and the building isn’t seen over the treetops in Google Street View), but it’s higher than the 2+ story building next door with the dormers.  The gray building directly ahead has 6 floors, and the view looks to be at eye level with the fourth floor.  I’m going to guess 4th floor, third window back.

Two hours later she amended her guess:

Oh wait! I just found a photo on Panoramio of the building next door, showing a sliver of the likely window.  The building has shorter stories, so I’d like to amend my guess to a window on the 5th (top) floor.  I also think it could be the first window back from the street.

From the photo submitter:

The address the picture was taken from is 171 Pushkinskaia ulitsa. The apartment number is 20. The apartment is on the fifth (top) floor. The latitude and longitude are 47 13 36 north, 39 43 24 E.

(Archive)

A reader takes in the scene:

Subtropical climate? Check. No snow? Check. Lots of unfinished construction? Check. Gotta be Sochi.

Another disagrees:

A smoggy city somewhere in the Northern hemisphere where they are building things. I might be mistaken. There are palm-like trees, so it could be Rio and the World Cup venue. Building is not far enough along to be Sochi, since it is around the corner.

Another is unimpressed:

Could this be a desolate part of Salmiya, Kuwait? It’s so hideous it could be well be true.

Another gets dreary:

We humans sure have made this a fugly world, haven’t we? Everything looks like San Jose to me. Or China somewhere.

Another:

Dakar, Senegal. My husband who is from there, assures me it is not but the landscape and huge construction projects are so evocative of Dakar to me that I had to lob in the guess anyway. Otherwise, it must be somewhere close by in West Africa.

Another:

You had me stumped on this one at first, but then I recognized the Marriott in the background – clearly the McMurdo Station Marriott, Antarctica. Seriously, I’m stumped beyond belief on this one.  I know there’s a clue in there that gives it away, but three hours of looking hasn’t turned it up. Bravo, a real puzzler this week!

Another:

Yep, harder this week.

I haven’t spent nearly anytime in this part of the world and can’t do a big search, but this feels like a Gulf State. Bahrain’s Al Manamah suburbs seems like it might fit in terms of the mix of larger buildings and empty lots. I’m guessing near Sanibis because there is a cluster of hotels.

If my guess is close, I hope we’ll hear from someone about the island-state’s natural features. I remember meeting a British expat from Bahrain telling me that it has the most amazing marine and bird life, which seems pretty different from the city-scapes and endless sand that we typically associate with the place. And of course, he noted that everything was in trouble from climate change and encroaching development.

Another:

Tall brown building in the background appears to be the YAR Group building in Nicosia, Cyprus. I am guessing the picture was taken on top floor of Kolan British Hospital in Northern Sector of Nicosia, Cyprus.

Another:

My new year resolution is to guess each week. Looks like the sand and building styles of the United Arab Emirates. I’ll guess Abu Dhabi.

Indeed, the UAE was a popular guess this week:

The vegetation, as well as what appear to be water tanks on most of the buildings, suggest a desert location. If I were to take an educated guess, I’d say it’s somewhere in the Gulf. If I were to take a slightly less educated guess, I’d say that the cityscape doesn’t look developed enough to be Kuwait, Manama, Doha, or any of the top-tier cities in the Emirates. So for what amounts to a completely uneducated guess, I’ll say it’s Fujairah, UAE.

Another:

This was a tough one. Palms and aridness indicate somewhere hot in the winter, new construction indicates somewhere prosperous. Arabian Peninsula? The distant skyscraper is the best clue and it looks a lot like Al Dana Tower, in Sharjah UAE. The water tower in the photo’s center is also possibly identifiable on satellite imagery, and using those points narrows it down to University City (Al Talah, Rifa’a, Al Turrfa, Al Darari, Al Shehba, Al Khezammia). See attached map:

These neighborhoods have the right look: gated drives and lots of construction sites and open lots. As much as I scoured the area, however, I couldn’t find the building! Worth a shot.

Another looks elsewhere in the Middle East:

I searched the skyscraper.com database, but that tall building doesn’t show up. So I did a Google on “tall buildings in xxx” and went through all the Middle Eastern countries, other than Israel(given the Arabic-like script).

The closest I came to with a similar building is in Tehran. There are two towers at these coordinates: 35 45′ 48.00″ N 51° 22′ 25.84″ E that sort of resemble the one in the photo, but thanks to massive economic and political sanctions and highly suspicious Iranians, there’s no Google Street View to confirm. I don’t even know what those buildings are. The image I found here [also to the right] is similar to the one in the photo, which gave me a starting point. I searched all the nearby hotels on TripAdvisor (which is becoming a resource for resolve these images) and found nothing that has this building or the roof of the building next door.

Therefore, I had to guess at a hotel. Since Tehran has mountains, I had to presume that the hotel backed up against the range. Without doing geometric tricks, I’m going to guess that the photographer was staying at: The Azadi Grand Hotel on Dr. Chamran Express Way, Evin Cross Road, Tehran. I can’t even guess a room number, I’m just shooting for closeness points this time. How close did I come?

Another gets the right country:

Wild guess this week – Dammam, Saudi Arabia.

Another reader’s spouse helps out:

“That looks like Saudi Arabia” said my wife, after about two seconds. Since she lived there for nine months, and is always right about these things, that’s where we went searching. The wiki list of tall buildings in Saudi Arabia is not very long, and the ninth one, the Dhahran Tower, has distinctive vertical lines on it, just like the one in the view! A bit of google earthing later (the striped building to the right helped), and we arrive at:

The Park Inn by Radisson Al Khobar Hotel
Al Rawabi District,
King Faisal Bin Abdulaziz Road,
Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia

The view is out of one of the back windows, fairly high up, so we’ll guess room 518. Here’s hoping this week was harder than last! In case this helps on a tie-breaker, my wife was working as an English teacher in Al-Ahsa, just down the road from Khobar, when I proposed to her, on her 28th (and my 30th) birthday, while we were on holiday in Morocco!

Every other reader who guessed Saudi Arabia also correctly guessed The Park Inn:

This looks like the desert, and the writing on the white sign in the lower-left looks Arabic, so we’re likely somewhere in the Middle East.  However, no mosques in sight!  That made me think of Western compounds in Saudi Arabia, so I looked at the center of the Saudi oil industry, Dhahran. Fortunately I came across the Suwaiket Tower in nearby Khobar, which looks a lot like the tall building in this picture.  By matching up a few other landmarks on Google Maps satellite view, such as the white-and-black Patchi building and the L-1 Suwaikit compound in the middle, I was able to figure out that this week’s view is taken from the Park Inn by Radisson Al-Khobar, King Fahd Ibn Abdul Aziz Rd, Khobar, Saudi Arabia.  Attached is a diagram of the viewpoint.  I can’t find a picture of that side of the hotel to pick out the specific window, but I guess it’s taken from the fifth floor.

The Grand Champion confirms:

This week’s view comes from Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia. The picture was taken from roughly the fifth floor of the Park Inn by Radisson hotel and looks northwest along a heading of 324.61 degrees towards the Al Suwaiket Tower in the distance on the left.

This one almost didn’t happen. Between the Super Bowl and showing guests around town this weekend, I had no real time to work on it until Monday night. Luckily the view was chock-a-block with clues (almost too many) and one last push proved successful.

Another nails the right floor:

You promised a harder contest, but I think this was as easy as last week! Here was how I found it:

The construction sign looked vaguely Arabic, so I searched for “tallest buildings in Saudi Arabia.” Among those was Dhahran tower, and it looked very similar to the hazy skyscraper; using the nearby, shorter buildings in the horizon, I was able to figure out that the vantage point direction was towards the northwest. Suspecting a hotel, I quickly saw the Radisson on Googlemaps – with the obvious rooftop plan of the foreground building, and nearby foliage! Another giveaway: the tan building with the conspicuous fire escape, to the north.

All in all, about 15 min. The hotel address is King Fahd Ibn Abdul Aziz Rd, Khobar Saudi Arabia. I suppose you’ll get a lot of correct entries, so the deciding factor is room floor and number – I have no idea how to pinpoint that. Since there are 5 floors, and thinking they are using the European storey system, I am guessing top floor (4th) – how about, oh, 420?

Heh. It’s actually 434, per the photo submitter. Since nobody guessed that room number, this week’s prize goes to the most active correct guesser of a difficult contest who’s never won before. His enthusiastic entry:

A-ha! This is my FOURTH time getting the exact right location (if you include the Cebu, Philippines one, which apparently everyone and their mother got right as well). God, I want that book so bad I can taste it …

Anyway, the first clue was the sign in front of the construction project in the vacant lot, center left. It wasn’t possible to read the letters when I zoomed in, but it was clear enough that the script was Arabic. Google image searches of rooftops in Arab countries indicate the water tanks are a type common in Saudi Arabia, made by a company called Polycon. So I figured we are likely in Saudi Arabia.

Next major clue was the very tall, lone building in the background of our photo: tall enough that it is likely among the tallest in its region, lonely enough that it is likely in a small-ish city. Among the 10 tallest buildings in Saudi Arabia, Wikipedia lists only one in the mid-sized city of Khobar – the Dhahran Tower. I Google imaged it, and it looked about right, though the tower in our image is just hazy enough that I couldn’t be sure yet.

From there, it was a matter of using Google Earth to figure out the proper orientation relative to Dhahran Tower, and then working my way back from landmark to landmark until I got to our vantage point. The real a-ha moment was when I recognized the Patchi building, just east of Dhahran Tower, confirming that it was indeed the Dhahran/Khobar area and allowing me to triangulate the precise location.

The photo was taken from the Radisson Park Inn Al Khobar, in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, from a north-facing window on approximately the sixth floor.

Please say I won, please say I won, please say I won …

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A reader makes a snap judgment:

Definitely Las Cruces, New Mexico. I recognized the Organ Mountains instantly from my many trips to New Mexico State University for work. Don’t know where in town exactly, but given the new state of what looks like an apartment complex I’d say it’s on the north side of town just west of Interstate 25 where most of the new construction seems to be taking place. Best I could do in the three minutes before heading out the door …

Another also goes with his gut:

I haven’t done the research, but my first reaction to that flatness was somewhere in California’s San Joaquin Valley. I’m sticking with it. John McPhee wrote that the San Joaquin “outplains the Great Plains,” and Hitchcock transplanted a corn field to the San Joaquin, because no location in the Midwest was flat enough for the crop duster scene in North by Northwest.

The housing market has been brutal in the San Joaquin the past several years, and that apartment/condo complex looks new-ish, so I’m going with Merced, which is home to the University of California’s newest campus and maybe a little more resilient.

Another:

The place looks like the San Francisco Bay area, somewhere on the Peninsula.  And the “lease” sign looks like it has area code 415 as its first 3 digits.  Clearly it’s a US motel (you can see the building 2 sign), along with US stop signs. You’ll get at least 2000 replies saying SFO area.

Most of this week’s contestants did answer the same area, but not San Francisco. Another gets close:

Clearly American Southwest (American because of the double-yellow line in the lower right hand corner, and Southwest because that’s the only place in America that looks like that). At first I was thinking someplace like Henderson, NV, but I think there are more mountains near Las Vegas. Tucson, AZ is the closest of any place I’ve been to resembling the location.

Arizona it is. Another recognizes the city:

After the renewal countdown started appearing on the Dish, I should have expected an obvious ploy to woo my re-up with an easy VYFW contest shot of a neighborhood in my metro. I have neither the skill, time nor patience to search Google images and maps for the exact spot but it looks like southeastern Phoenix to me. Pretty sure that’s Piestewa Peak in the mountain range in the background which is not far from my house.

Alright already! Rest assured my renewal will be forthcoming.

Another notices the main hidden clue for this week’s contest:

Go Tigers!

Another elaborates:

This is totally exciting for me to send this. I love the VFYW contest but they’re always so difficult.

The picture immediately reminded me of how it looks in Arizona. I live in Sierra Vista (not far from the Mexican-American border) which is several hours from Phoenix, but it’s looks pretty similar. The view is from the Phoenix Airport Marriott hotel in Phoenix, Arizona. The sign by the road is “Balsz Tigers” next to the Balsz Elementary school located at 4309 East Belleview, Phoenix, AZ 85008. The hotel is at the corner of E Moreland Street and N 44th street.

I know I won’t win. I know people will send exact floor and window of the hotel, but I don’t care. It’s quite awesome just to send this in for the first time.

And an awesome visual. Another is also just thrilled to be a contender:

One of my FAVORITE parts about the Dish is the VFYW contest, and one of the reasons I renewed my subscription last week was so I could keep seeing the fascinating entries – but I am so excited to send in my FIRST guess! I am sure you are going to get a million entries for this one, since the “Balsz Tigers” is Google-able to Phoenix, Arizona, and the airport Marriott is right there. I’ll guess the sixth floor of the Marriott at 1101 North 44th Street, Phoenix, AZ, and leave your insanely skilled readership to beat me by choosing the room

How fun, thanks for throwing us an easy one! (Now I really hope I’m right and not in the dreaded section above Read On …)

The very first guess we received this week:

Omigod! Okay, I’m not going for the win by figuring out where the hell is the tall building near the Papago Gardens condo complex in Phoenix because I just want to get this in before anyone else does. The elementary school across the street is called Balsz. Yes. And their slogan is “Believe in Balsz … Balsz believes in you!”

Other readers question our motives:

Pretty balszy (or lazy) of you.

Another:

Did you want to see how many people actually play?

461 this week. But the Green Line in Brookline is still our most popular contest ever, as far as entries. Another reader:

Is it some renewal marketing effort or have the pictures from Equatorial Guinea or some sparsely populated Swiss Canton stopped coming in?

Challenging-but-not-too-challenging views have become really scarce in the in-tray, but once in a while it’s good to throw a really easy one in the mix so most people can participate. Another reader:

I see from GoogleMaps that this shot is taken from an upper floor window of the Phoenix Airport Marriott hotel, but I haven’t a clue how to do the trajectory calculation to find the exact window. Kudos to the techies who are masters at this sort of thing.  Thanks for throwing a piece of low-hanging fruit to those of us who otherwise despair week after week.  Know hope indeed!

And fun for the whole family:

My nine-year-old son has taken an interest in the VFYW contest and this one was easy enough that I could coach him through the steps.  While I recognized it as Phoenix right away, I walked him through the steps (plants suggest desert, looks like American city, etc.).  He found the “Balsz Tigers” sign and was able to locate the school in PHX using Google.  Little bit harder to get the “taken from” concept but the whole experience was fun for him.  Later in the morning I heard him quizzing his younger sister about the puzzle and explaining the clues.

Another channels her inner grand-champion:

This photo is taken from the Phoenix Airport Marriott, 1101 North 44th Street, looking northwest. I’m guessing the 12th (i.e., top) floor. Alanza Place Luxury Apartments in the middle of the photo; Balsz Elementary School off to the left – how nice of them to put up a sign for their team!

Given the HUGE clue right in the middle of the photo (maybe it was chosen after a very long day of working on renewals?), I’m sure you’ll have hundreds of correct answers. Maybe that should reduce my excitement level about identifying a View, but I’m still utterly thrilled. You once ran one of my photos (Contest #144) and one of my (incorrect) guesses, but my VFYW footprint is otherwise non-existent. I toil in obscurity. Sometimes I get close; (I guessed Germany last week); more often I’m on the wrong continent.

Until today. This is as close to a Doug Chini moment as I’m going to get, and I’m savoring it!

Speaking of Chini-like triangulation:

Tricky. Google Maps doesn’t have the Balsz Tigers art in the fence, but there aren’t many Balsz Tigers in the world to Google. I’d say it’s from one of the top floors (9th?) from how steeply it can look down on the neighboring buildings and from near the convex part of the building from what was included in the photo.

Another reader knows the area well:

Having lived in Phoenix during my teens I instantly recognized the sharp profile of Piestewa Peak on the horizon, a popular scramble for local climbers and hikers. (We knew it then as Squaw Peak before it was renamed in honor of Lori Ann Piestewa, the Hopi woman who was the first female casualty of the Iraq War and the first Native American woman to die in a US military combat operation)

Another notes:

Piestewa Peak was named after Lori Piestewa, the first woman to be killed in action in the war in Iraq. She was taken as a POW along with her best friend Jessica Lynch but unfortunately died from the injuries she sustained in battle before she could be rescued. It’s good to remember those who served.

Another sends the best visual entry this week:

I’m terrible at guessing heights and room numbers, but I’m going to go with room 1105 – possibly a business suite, a photo of which is attached as BusinessSuite – since those are the only rooms I can find on the Marriott website that show plants in the rooms. (Well, those, and the concierge suite which seems to be on a lower floor and features a balcony.)

Another reader has stayed at the hotel often:

This week’s VFYW is taken from the Phoenix Airport Marriott, located at 1101 N 44th St in Phoenix. I’ll guess its taken from the seventh floor. I’m not sure of an exact room number this week, as I can’t find any posted floor plans of the Phoenix Airport Marriott, most likely due to the fact that it’s an airport hotel and security precautions preclude them from posting photos that might give potential wrongdoers a leg up. I’ve actually stayed there several times in the past, as this was a hotel my former employer used for conferences when I was still working. If only I’d known that eight years later I’d be playing an addictive detective-type game that required a detailed floor plan in order to MAYBE win, I’d have held onto the map that they gave us through my cross-country moves. (If only I was joking …)

Another gets painfully close to the right window:

The window looks skinnier than most of those on the front of the hotel. Based on the angle of the hotel compared to the street, it doesn’t appear to be one of the smaller ones on the half-moon extending out of the left side. Therefore, I’m guessing it has to be one of the very skinny windows just to the right of the half-moon. Since those windows are, in turn, right next to a section of the facade without any windows, I’m guessing these windows are for guests waiting for the elevator. Some eyeballing the distance from the top of the building across the street to the horizon, I’m guessing the 10th floor, but I’m not too confident about that. See the attached image in case my description is not sufficient:

A Phoenix native was tempted to head down to the scene:

I recognized Piestewa Peak right away (formerly known as Squaw Peak), then used the antenna in the distance to figure out that it had to be taken from the airport Marriott on 44th St and Belleview in Phoenix, AZ. As that’s only about a mile from my house, I considered getting in the car and going there to figure out the room. Then I realized it’s the weekend, so I opened a bottle of wine instead. Totally bookworthy.

One more:

There’s no way on Earth I can win this one, since the “BALSZ TIGERS” sign is going to completely give away the location and people are going to spend hours triangulating the exact position of the window in the Phoenix Airport Marriot. Of the 1000+ entries that guess that much correctly, I’m assuming that 300+ will get the correct room. Of those, 100+ will guess how far the photographer was standing from the window, 50+ will know the species of house plant blocking the view, and 5 will somehow deduce the photographer’s blood type. The winner will be the one who did all this successfully 83 times without winning.

Indeed, this week’s winner has correctly guessed numerous previous contest without ever clinching the prize. His detailed entry:

This one was too easy. The Balsz Tigers banner is easily visible along the major thoroughfare, so a Google search for that turned up Balsz Elementary in Phoenix. When you look at that in Google Maps, it’s clear that Balsz Elementary is the building in the left of the VFYW, and the picture is taken from the Marriott. (See image #1 for the range of the view shown in the VFYW.) So this is going to be an issue of getting the right picture.

A view from the other end of the side street visible on the right in the VFYW makes it clear that the center of the Marriot looks slightly different.  (See image #2.)  A view from N 44th Street, basically a reverse of the window view, confirms that the near windows of the center part would fit the picture.  (See image #3) Although the hotel is positioned at an angle to the street, the VFYW seems to be even more angled, indicating that the windows facing more toward N 44th Street would fit.

Then it’s an issue of which floor. I honestly have no idea, so I’m just guessing the window I’ve indicated in image #4, attached.

The submitter of the contest photo verified the exact window for us and added:

I was there for a science fiction convention called Dark Con that featured Adrian Paul of “Highlander” and world-famous science fiction author Gini Koch. After I noticed this week’s contest was based on my photo, it took great restraint on the part of my best friend to keep him from entering. We play every week. I even bought him a Dish subscription to make it easier!

Many thanks to the hundreds of contestants this week, most of whom were playing for the first time. And don’t worry, next week will be much more challenging!

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