A scavenger team on a hunt in Greenwich Village.

Julie Jacobs

NEW YORK — The poor guy was just trying to sit on the base of a statue and read.

Hearing a clamor, he looked up to find five of us charging at him, surrounding the statue of Fiorello LaGuardia and inspecting it as though we expected a gold doubloon to pop out of the former New York mayor’s ear.

We blurted that we were really sorry but we had to find the location of the sculptor’s signature for a scavenger hunt — and, by the way, half a dozen other teams were on the way, seeking the same information.

As the would-be reader sullenly slunk away, we discovered sculptor Neil Estern’s signature on LaGuardia’s left pants cuff, wrote that information down and galloped off.

This is one way to tour Greenwich Village. It’s not your standard tour, in which a docent regales you with history as you stand in a clump on a street corner. No, this is a mad, two-hour scramble in which, with a list of clues, you find your own bits of history. And get blisters if you wear the wrong shoes.

Watson Adventures started offering these scavenger hunts in the city’s various neighborhoods as a corporate retreat activity, then later branched out into public hunts on weekends.

It’s an inventive way of taking a close look at a given part of the city — in this case, Greenwich Village, the laid-back downtown neighborhood bounded by Houston Street, 14th Street, Broadway and the Hudson River. The ’hood has long been a favorite of writers, rockers, artists and, yes, scavengers.

I didn’t know what to expect when I showed up in Washington Square, the hunt’s meeting place with my friend Scott Nyerges. I wondered if, like Carole Lombard in the 1936 film My Man Godfrey, we’d be sent in search of a forgotten man. But — happily, considering the clip at which we had to move — there was no collecting of things or people on this hunt.

Instead, we were given 24 printed clues and released to find answers to questions such as, “If the founding father were a pet, what sound would he make?” (A street sign held the answer: Washington Mews.)

Around the Village we raced, like maddened rats, peering at the clue sheet as we scurried along, taking no time to smell the roses, linger at historic sites or (sigh) duck into one of the Village’s many cafes for a respite.

Our team consisted of me, Scott and three people we didn’t know: Patricia Stoffers and Shelby Klein from Eau Claire, Wis., and Shelby’s college student daughter, Xana Gonzalez.

We all turned out to be pretty competitive Type A’s and darn good maddened rats. We scurried well, in the process bumping into a good many locals, not always with cheerful results.

At Cherry Lane Theatre, we were looking for proof that in its early days, its performances “might have been considered intoxicating” (or so said the clue sheet). We assumed the building must have had a past life as a tavern or some such thing, but the historical marker didn’t say so.

Shelby made a move toward the guy in the box office, who warned her off with a stern “NO.”

“Guess you’re sick of people like us asking that question,” she said to him.

“YES!” he spat.

About that time, Scott located, in fine print on a performance calendar on the side of the theater, the information that the theater used to be a brewery. Ah!

We got a better reception at Lucille Lortel Theatre, where, as we rushed up and started scouring a sidewalk filled with stars bearing playwrights’ names, a man polishing the stars offered, without prompting, “You’re looking for Horton Foote.”

I’d found that one already, though. The clue was “podiatrist.”

“Got that one. We’re looking for the postman,” I told the man.

“Norman Mailer,” he offered, without rancor.

We were grateful.

At times, we felt like the Village idiots. One clue instructed us to “stand on a triangle” and figure out what “estate” would “get smokin’ mad” and accuse us of trespassing.

Huh?

There are many triangle-shaped parcels in the Village — something that makes navigating it difficult. But the closest triangle to us at that point was an island with a newsstand on it.

We stood on it. We pondered. No estate got upset.

Then a couple of us focused on the word “smokin’ ” and noticed a cigar shop across the street. And, hey: It was on a triangular piece of property. But who’d get mad at us for being there?

Finally, we scampered across the street and stood in front of the cigar shop, immediately realizing that we were standing on a small tiled triangle with a marker that decreed the property to be part of the Hess Estate and private property.

Oh.

Two hours later, we huffed and puffed our way back to Washington Square, sweaty and, in my case, blistered of foot. We had answers to all of the questions — most of them, as it turned out, correct.

Our team actually tied for first place, but we lost a tie-breaking literary question that I can’t remember. I consoled myself that the winners got T-shirts, something I have plenty of.

One of my teammates, Patricia, won a drawing for a free future hunt with Watson Adventures. Scott and I were happy for her, albeit not envious. The only thing we wanted to hunt for at that moment was a tall pitcher of sangria.

We found it, a block away.