Artist Paints Funky Station in time for Golf

Artist Paints Funky Railway Station in time for Golf & Weaves in Mystery Clues to begin cryptic Puzzle.

6 Jan 2001

Summary:

Controversial Paraparaumu Beach artist Shona Moller, who had her work banned by the Advertising Standards Complaints Board 6 months ago for “too much nudity”, has painted the old Paraparaumu Railway station in a project backed by the Kapiti Coast District Council. Finished just in time for the NZ Golf Open. The station is now painted in the zingiest shades of lime, tangerine, fire-engine red, lemon and blue and will be a ‘memorable’ gateway to Kapiti for this week’s golf tournament.

In the design, Shona has used the station as the starting point for a puzzle that takes you to a mystery web site then into the lives of 5 high profile New Zealanders, each holding one fifth of an answer to a summer brainteaser.

Key Points:

The Mystery:
- The Railway Station is the start and provides 5 clues
- Together as an acronym, the 5 clues will take you to a temporary NZ web site that has been set up only for the puzzle.
- Once at the web site participants will see that it contains only an e-mail address and 5 sets of cryptic instructions. The web site is not accessible via any search engines.
- The Instructions on the web site will lead participants to 5 New Zealanders. Each person contains one fifth of the answer. They are expecting your call.
- When prompted with the correct cue, these 5 people will each tell participants their piece of the puzzle.
- Put the 5 pieces together and e-mail the answer via the secret web site to solve the mystery and gain the kudos of having cracked the puzzle.

The puzzle runs until the end of the NZ Open, it is free to enter and is open to anyone. Only the artist has the answer to the puzzle, even the five anonymous New Zealanders, holders of 1/5th of the answer, don’t know who the other 4 mystery people are. The puzzle has no commercial intent or bias.

The Station:
- Decorating the station was the idea of Robert Baldock of Event Agency who has been contracted by the local council as event manager for the golf (021-623093)
- There will be thousands of visitors using the Paraparaumu Railway station as a gateway to Kapiti during the NZ Golf Open in January. First impressions count and it was decided several months ago to go ahead with the paint job.
- Tranzmetro Marketing Manager Gordon Horsley gave the final go-ahead this week and is curious about the reaction the modern looking station will provoke from Tranzrail customers.
- Public reaction to the design has been mixed, however, everybody seems to have a strong opinion about it.

Extra clues to get to the web site:

 The answer at the Train Station is a 5 letter acronym
 The web site is a ‘.co.nz’ web site.
 The paints chosen are Resene’s colours.
 The answer contains the nationality of Tiger Woods’ mother.

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