Catch him if you can — win $5,000

Evan Ratliff, we are on to you.

You sold your car for a motorcycle. We saw that the check cleared on Aug. 14.

That same week, you headed north out of San Francisco. We saw that you had passed through a "Fast Track" toll lane.

But then you turned south, didn't you? We saw that $17 charge at the Viceroy Hotel — in Santa Monica.

Ratliff, 34, a reporter for Wired magazine, purposely and publicly "vanished" on Aug. 17 in an experiment that tests the public's skill with social networks, e-mail and databases.

Anyone who finds Ratliff, takes his picture, utters the code word "fluke" and gets a code word from Ratliff before Sept. 17 will win $5,000. (Read the details at www.wired.com/vanish.)

Clues to Ratliff's whereabouts have been posted on Twitter and Facebook. Some are from his editor, Nicholas Thompson, who has access to Ratliff's credit-card and other accounts. Some may be from Ratliff himself.

Still others are coming from an ever-growing band of scouts led by Teeuwynn Woodruff (pronounced "TAY-uh-win"), creative director at Lone Shark Games in Sammamish.

Wired hired Woodruff, 40, to lead the hunt. She posts the clues she receives from Thompson and her scouts, who are using every online tracking system they can think of. (See http://twitter.com/EvansVanished)."It's interesting what people can find," Woodruff said. "We're only seeing the surface of it."

Scouts have deconstructed Ratliff's credit-card spending, staked out his house using Google Maps, scrutinized his Twitter and Facebook updates and tried to "de-cloak" his e-mail.

When Ratliff posted on his Facebook page a photo of his cat sitting on a grate, a scout zoomed in on the photo to see that the grate was marked "S.F.W.D." So he was in San Francisco. Right?

Lone Shark President Mike Selinker knew Woodruff would make the perfect den mother for the legion of scouts playing this "non-alternate reality game."

"Why wouldn't I put Tey in charge of this thing?" he asked. "She's the person you want on your side." Indeed, Woodruff brings a female sensibility not only to the search for Ratliff, but to the male-dominated world of games and puzzles. And that is rare. Selinker couldn't name five female game designers, something he blames on "institutional biases," and the belief that women "can't handle" mathematics.

Woodruff minored in computer science, so she knows how code gets written.

But her strength is the vision and creation of games. She has worked on Dungeons and Dragons, Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering, among others.

"I tell people I make up stories for a living," she said.

Women do play games, Woodruff said. "They're just not games that men count."

Popular right now are "Diner Dash" and "Bejeweled," which involve putting things in place.

"It has the completion, the putting things right," Woodruff said. "And when does that ever happen in your life?"

Not very often at Woodruff's Sammamish home, where she and her husband are raising three young kids.

Seems Evan Ratliff isn't the only one enjoying his escape.

"I can reach into the world and affect this network of thousands of people who are all trying to figure out where this one guy is," Woodruff said. "Sure takes me out of my home office."

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Tuesday and Friday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.

Might he show up at PAX?