Armchair Treasure Hunts (or, Make thousands of dollars by working at home!)

I was all set this week to write about the fiascos and disasters of the PuzzleHuntContest world, when one of my Google alerts brought up this:

$1 Million Dollar Treasure Hunt Making a Difference in Breast Cancer Research 

It seems someone has hit upon the idea of using an Armchair Treasure Hunt as part of a fundraising campaign.  This particular hunt, labeled The World's Greatest Treasure Hunt (which I shall abbreviate TWGTH), requires you to buy a book (or 2, or 3) for a hefty price, most of which goes to a breast cancer research charity.  The book has 12 chapters, each referencing a famous hidden treasure, each yielding a prize, and each, apparently, written by a different puzzlesmith.  After all 12 prizes have been found, you can start searching for the grand prize, a golden eagle.  The winner of the first prize, Roger Lintott of the UK, solved the chapter based on the D.B. Cooper story, and found his silver eagle prize at the base of the Space Needle.

Careful with that thing; it's worth $37K

Chapter 2 is about the Maltese Falcon, and centers on San Francisco.  Before you go digging at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge, you should know that the other treasures probably aren't out there.  It seems the people behind TWGTH have learned a lesson or two about past fiascos, thus tying neatly into my original topic.  Lesson one:  NO DIGGING!  Roger figured everything out online, submitted a solution online, and, once it was verified, was flown out for a little Amazing-Race style rush through famous Seattle landmarks to find a certificate 'buried' under a paper X:

Not found under the '.com'

You can find more pictures on TWGTH's Facebook page.

Let's flashback to the first armchair treasure hunt book.

Masquerade:  The first of its kind, in more ways than one

It all started in 1979

Author/illustrator Kit Williams created a genre with Masquerade, a children's book that was also a hunt for real treasure:  a jeweled gold hare that Williams had buried somewhere in Britain.  Hundreds of thousands of copies were sold, and dozens of places across Britain were dug up, most without permission.  If you couldn't make it to Britain on the basis of a hunch, you were invited to send your solution to Williams by mail, and he would let you know if you were correct (presumably at that point you would buy your plane ticket to riches and glory). The hare was found about three years later by Ken Thomas, and numerous follow-up books were written with similar buried prizes.  I don't think any sold as well as Masquerade, but there are still Armchair Treasure Hunting societies out there.  The most popular website for discussing these and other treasure hunts is tweleve.org.  

This is all well and good, and apart from the damage done to places in England like Haresfield Beacon, no harm no foul, right?  Not exactly.  It turns out 'Ken Thomas' was a fraud, a pseudonym for Dugald Thompson, whose business partner John Guard's girlfriend was Kit Williams's ex-girlfriend.  She knew approximately where the hare was buried, Guard and Thompson found a likely location, and, after some fruitless searching with metal detectors, Thompson sent Williams a note with a drawing of their best guess.  Williams, per his agreement, wrote back saying they had the right location.

To complicate matters, a pair of schoolteachers had solved the puzzle correctly, and were digging in the correct location.  But the puzzle was based on a monument's shadow at the equinox, Williams had slightly miscalculated the location, and they were digging a few feet off.  Thompson happened to be around when they were digging and noticed that they had unknowingly dug up the container with the treasure and left it in a pile of dirt.  Thompson took it for his own and contacted Williams again as 'Thomas' to announce that he had found the hare.  The skullduggery did not come to light until 1988.  You can read the whole story.

Once is not enough

The hare's final fate:  bankruptcy auction

Masquerade directly bred one more scandal when Thompson used the prize as the basis for a computer puzzle game, where the hare was to be the grand prize.  The puzzle was never solved (and was allegedly unsolvable, with the hare as bait to get you to buy the game).  The hare was finally sold by Sotheby's.

The most popular follow-up book in the US was Treasure: In Search of the Golden Horse (full disclosure:  I once got it as a birthday present).  The Golden Horse was never found, the contest expired in 1989 and all prize money was donated to charity.  Seven months later, the puzzle was supposedly solved and the solvers dug up a consolation prize in the Colorado.  But their solution did not appear to make sense, and it is widely conjectured that the promoters made a number of errors that led to the puzzle being unsolvable.  To save face, they directed the 'solvers' to the spot in Colorado.

With this background of deception on all sides, it's not surprising that TWGTH comes with a long list of Official Rules, Terms and Conditions, and a Liability Disclaimer, and the promoters have come up with an elaborate series of safeguards to guard against someone winning the puzzle without actually solving the puzzle.  On the other side of the coin, potential solvers are wary of spending $30-$50 on a book featuring a puzzle that isn't solvable.  In this respect, breaking up the puzzle into 13 separate puzzles was a smart idea.  The fact that someone has solved the first puzzle should give you hope that the others are solvable as well and there are actual prizes to be won.

Math is hard, let's go shopping!

Optional equipment

So, should you go out and buy this book?  The first puzzle took over two years to solve (the book was released in late 2009 and you were not allowed to solve the puzzle until early 2010).  If you look at the solution, you might get an idea why. Also, poke around the message boards on tweleve.org to get some idea as to what others think about how difficult (and 'fair') the puzzle was.  I read some gripes, but there always seem to be sour grapes after someone finally wins.

To help speed things up, the promoters have taken to giving out occasional clues on TWGTH's Facebook page.  (Apparently some of those gripes had to do with these clues so, as always, be careful...)

What I'm wondering about, though, is the fundraising aspect of this endeavor.  The promoters claim this is a part of raising $100 million for breast cancer research, and I'm dubious they will come close.  The book has no publisher or distributor (which allows more of the profits to go to charity, but still...).  The first I heard of it was the aforementioned Google Alert.  Even after the event yesterday, the only news reference I can find to it is in Albany, NY.  Despite all their efforts, it seems that the mania for armchair treasure hunts has long since passed.

Which I guess means there's more out there for those of us that try.

Coming Attractions

This could be you!  (Photo: Sean Sweeney)

See last week's post for more detail on the events with a minimal description.

• UW Amazing Race - May 19, 11:30-1.  Is everything happening today?  Seems like it.  Teams of 2 (who may or may not need to be UW Students) run around the U-District for some pretty good-looking prizes.  Can you still sign up?  Answer is foggy, but it's worth a shot.
• Dumpster Champ - May 19.  Alleycat
• Seattle Challenge - May 19.  The first of the 'Amazing Race' style events of the year.  
• Battle for Seattle - May 19.   Photo Scavenger Hunt, UW Students only.
• Evening Orienteering - Wednesday, May 23, Robinswood Park, Bellevue.  Orienteering + free food.
• Gig Harbor Street Scramble - May 26, free. 
• The Seattle Public Library will be hiding 1000 books around town, in connection with their Summer Reading Program.  Want more info?  Tough.  Wait until June 1.
• Hood Hunt Moses Lake - June 2.  
• Long O - June 2, Moses Lake.  
• Kid and Goat O - June 3, Fishtrap Lake.  
• First Thursday Adventure Run - June 7, Green Lake.  
• Evening Orienteering - Wednesday, June 13, Kelsey Creek Park, Bellevue.  This may have been moved to the 20th.
• 9-5 Scavenger Hunt -  June 16-17, Gasworks Park.  That's 9pm to 5am, folks.  Caffeine stops and breakfast are provided to help keep you rolling (and send you on your way back to your bed to sleep it off).  Or you could do like my friend Dave, who always shows up at the beginning, rides home to sleep, then comes back at 5am for the breakfast.  Form a team if you're serious about winning, because, apart from the late night time frame, this is a classic scavenger hunt where you need to acquire as many things as possible from a long list.
• Run26 Third Thursday Adventure Run - June 21, Mill Creek.  A lot like the First Thursday Adventure Run, but two weeks later and (I hear) more disorganized.  Still, lower attendance means you're more likely to win!
• Girls of Summer Alleycat, pt. 2 - June 23, I-5 Colonnade Park.  Part one was last summer, and you didn't miss much, except for one of the best bike races of the year.  Women only.  Guys, you can help out at checkpoints (last year, they had, among others, 'prom pictures with your bike' and a race on Big Wheel-sized trikes -- see above).  Expect awesomeness.

Cooped up with a cold?  Ponder this list of items to obtain, from the 2012 University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt.