CLUE 10

We arrived at this location at 4:00 am, after closing time, so Monty - who couldn't have been nicer - said he couldn't fix us our two Nebuchadnezzars.  He let us in, however, and we took photos and chatted for a while with two locals who were still there, and who seemed really interested in the game.

Monty - click on image to see it full-size

Technically, a nebuchadnezzar is the largest size of champagne bottle (15 liters, or 20 750 ml bottles). So a nebuchadnezzar is larger than a magnum, a jeroboam, a rehoboam, a methuselah, a salmanazar, yes, even larger than a balthazar! $20 goes a long way in Felton, apparently (just kidding - according to GC we were supposed to get  "... two really nasty shots from the bar. But people who made it said he was nice, and that the shots were pretty good.").  {More fun alcohol facts here.}

Considering that we were seriously sleep-deprived, driving a 15-passenger behemoth, and about to hit the twisty turns of Skyline Boulevard in the fog, perhaps it's better that we didn't get our two shots.

We paid Monty $20 anyway, and he gave us a roll of quarters in a paper wrapper. On this wrapper was hand-written "KEEP THESE WITH YOU"

We carefully opened the roll and took the quarters out one by one, cataloguing them as we went, even down to their orientation, in case heads/tails was important (it wasn't, they were all facing the same way). And here's what we got. Note that we would get several in a row of one state, then several of another state, etc which is reflected in the following table:

State Number Year Minted Inscription
New Hampshire 4 1788 2000 Live Free or Die/Old Man
New York 4 1788 2001 Gateway to Freedom
Massachusetts 3 1788 2000 The Bay State
regular quarter 8 n/a 1994 E Pluribus Unum
New York 2 1788 2001 Gateway to Freedom
North Carolina 4 1789 1999 First Flight
Connecticut 7 1788 1999 The Charter Oak
Massachusetts 5 1788 2000 The Bay State
Virginia 3 1788 2000 Jamestown Quadricentennial

 

Solution