About that sphinx
For Halloween, each homeroom comes up with an idea for a game or activity that everyone in school can enjoy. It could be pumpkin bowling, fortune telling, karaoke singing, creating a disco or a western saloon. Some homerooms take over an area and shroud it in black plastic a few days before Halloween so no one will see what they're preparing. On Halloween itself, everyone wears a costume and we spend the afternoon taking shifts helping in our own homeroom and seeing what's up around the school.
The Sphinx was built by Thomas McNiece and the members of Chris’ homeroom for the 2004 Halloween party. In an article explaining how the Sphinx was conceived and built, Thomas wrote:
". . But one part of it didn’t turn out the way we had hoped. The original plan was that people who entered the Sphinx would place a piece of candy into the bowl. Then they would answer a riddle. If they answered the riddle correctly, a piece of candy would fall out of a trap door and into the bowl, and then it’s somebody else’s turn. If they answered the riddle wrong then a trap door below the bowl would open and they would lose their candy, but then they would get one more try. All the technical stuff like the trapdoors worked fine, but a lot of little kids came, and we knew they couldn’t answer the riddles, so we just gave them the candy."