Learn more about The Great US Treasure Hunt 2024! Since 2020 The Great US Treasure Hunt has been challenging searchers! Each time their hunts have proved successful and an exciting adventure for those that got involved. Don’t miss out on now the 3rd round! This time there are clues to 10 hidden treasures – spread out across the US – each with a $1,000 cash prize!
As with the past hunts, the clues are solvable – and will be solved with the treasures claimed. YOU could be the one to claim one! Let’s find out more!
Six Questions with Dave:
- 1Q) To date you’ve given out over $45,000 in cash! That’s quite generous! Since this is your third round of hunts, what keeps you coming back? What are you enjoying about The Great US Treasure Hunt? Also, please share how someone can participate in this round of hunts.
Thanks, Jenny, for giving us the chance to answer some questions about the third version of The Great US Treasure Hunt.
Dave here. I’ve been a puzzle solver and had an attraction to treasure hunts since I was a kid. I saw an episode of one of the old Batman TV series not too long ago, with Adam West as Batman, and it featured The Riddler. I remember watching that show when I was five. The riddles were easy, of course, because that show was made as much for kids to be thrilled by as it was for adults to laugh at, but I realized that, holy cow, Batman, I’ve been interested in solving puzzles since I was a kid.
I also suspect that many adults have similar experiences in their formative years. Look at all the movies that focus on finding treasure or similar adventures. From Treasure Island to the National Treasure franchise to It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World to Romancing the Stone to the Goonies, which is getting a sequel after forty years! Treasure hunting is just classic, timeless entertainment.
So that’s what’s fun about it: being the creator of something that people can enjoy in real life, solve cool puzzles that aren’t diabolical, then either get a partner to find an actual hidden treasure, or maybe find it themselves.
And so many of the folks who have already ordered their books are names we recognize as previous winners or players. It really is heartwarming to know that they’re coming back to participate in a game that’s about having fun at the end of the day. If you solve a puzzle and find a coin, that’s great. But if you don’t have fun while you’re doing it, you probably aren’t coming back. So we’re grateful to our returning players.
To join the Great US Treasure Hunt 2024, just go to the website and order a book. We’ve got the Hunter package, which is one book for $30; the Collector package, two books and a souvenir coin for $60; and the Team package, which is three books and three coins for $90. All prices include shipping. The books mail out via normal US mail on October 15.
- 2Q) You’ve mentioned one of the 10 puzzles in the book is most likely to be solved on day 1. You feel it is that simple. What are your thoughts about the others? Will there be any hunts remaining unsolved after 3 months? 6 months? Do you plan on giving additional clues if any hunts remain unsolved after a certain timeframe?
We’ve got to preface this by saying that we know how clever our Hunters are. For some of them, solving puzzles and riddles and codes and ciphers is their passion. So we know we’ve got to come up with puzzles that are challenging: solvable, but perhaps not instantly solvable. However, we also remember back to when we were kids watching Batman…sometimes, it’s fun to be able to solve a puzzle fast! And families may have kids helping. So we definitely put one puzzle in the book that we’re almost certain is a slam dunk to be solved on the first day the books hit mailboxes. Obviously, we’re not going to say which one, or where the coin is, but I’m sure there are some Hunters who will say “that was way too easy!” That’s okay, solve the other nine.
As for the other nine, it’s really difficult to assess which ones will be solved in days, and which ones might take weeks. But let’s be clear: we’re not in the mindset of letting this Hunt drag on for six months or more. So if there are locations that have gone unsolved for a period of time, there will be clues. As long as progress is being made, and winners are finding coins, there won’t be any clues. But if we’ve gone a few weeks and nothing has happened, we’ll absolutely consider giving clues or hints.
- 3Q) I think many TGUSTH searchers of the past have appreciated the solvability of your puzzles. You haven’t made them extremely difficult in previous hunts – where only those with brilliant code breaking skills could win, but anyone could. Are all the puzzles in this third round of hunts simple – in the sense they can be solved by creativity, instead of genius?
In the first Hunt, we had the clues decipherable through text in the chapters of an ebook, and it was an open-ended Hunt. There were books to sell, obviously, so we didn’t want everything wrapped up on Day One. We thought the solution methods were fair, and not some series of complexities on top of other complexities. For example, the first solution, by Beth Hovanec, correctly focused on the One Hit Wonder songs and bands in that chapter. By using the first initial of either the song or the band, she was able to spell the location. And that took over 30 days, but we thought that was potentially going to be solved within the first few days. So we were wrong. It was harder than we thought.
In the second Hunt, we had a completely different format: clues via email, and on six consecutive weekends. So those clues had to be much easier, because our goal was to get a winner on that first day. And that’s exactly what happened. In fact, the Asheville Hunt was so successful that we had four teams simultaneously searching the park for the coin, and within the first 60 minutes after the coin was found, ten other groups of hunters showed up. We were lucky to be featured on the local news the previous night, and got over 1,200 players registered in the last 12 hours before the Hunt. That’s more than 1% of the entire population of Asheville!
Imagine a Treasure Hunt where 1% of the US was playing. That would be over three million players! And that was just two news reports on the night before.
Now we’re back to clues in books, but where our first Hunt was an e-book, this one is a comic book format, and we can do so much more with that as far as colors, shapes, and illustrations being part of the puzzles. So we’re hoping that when we start getting our winners and begin explaining the puzzle solutions (we will explain all of them), that any player will listen to our explanation and say “okay, that was fair. Tough, but fair.” And maybe not even that tough. There are a few puzzles where we can describe how to solve the puzzle in fewer than 20 words.
- 4Q) For someone new to treasure hunting, just seeing this idea for the first time and wanting to take a crack at it, what advice would you give them, so they have a chance to solve one of the puzzles, and win some cash?
First of all, team up with people across the country, because the chances aren’t good that you will solve a puzzle where the location is close enough for you to reach in time to find the coin yourself. Obviously, family and friends are the best choices, but you can find Facebook, Reddit, Discord, and similar groups dedicated to gaming and treasure hunting. (We aren’t moderating any of those groups, so beware of any sites that say you’re getting inside info from The Great US Treasure Hunt organizers.) Get into a group or make connections with people. Even if they don’t have a book, that’s okay, as long as you’ve got Finders all over the place that can go get the coin if you solve the puzzle.
Clearly, though, the more of your team that are actually trying to solve puzzles the better, so from a somewhat selfish point of view, we’d like everyone on the team to have a book.
As to the solving of the puzzles themselves, they are generally going to be two-page spreads, with text or numbers or symbols on the left page and illustrations on the right page. Sometimes you’ll use only the left page, sometimes the right, and sometimes you’ll have to use them both. There might be clues on the left side as to how to solve the puzzle on the right side, or vice versa.
Because there are ten puzzles, I’d say look through all ten first, to get a feel for the different vibes of each puzzle. Then start with the one that you connect with the most. Are you a word person? Start with a wordier puzzle. And the same if you’re more of a numbers person. We think there’s something for everyone. Most of all, have fun.
- 5Q) As a creator of Escape Rooms, seeing different groups of people working together trying to solve puzzles, what do you feel are some of the obstacles that trip people up? How might they overcome these when trying to solve your book puzzles?
Ironically, it’s *bad teamwork* that tripped up more groups than any other single element. Of course, a team of people come into an escape room, and everyone tries to work together to solve the puzzles to escape the room. But whenever a team would go horribly wrong, it was almost always because a Leader-type was wrong, and wouldn’t listen to suggestions from the other players, or the other players weren’t confident enough in themselves to speak up about their ideas.
So our suggestion is to try to solve an entire puzzle by yourself first, without a single suggestion or “what if” from a teammate (if you choose to go that route). Have confidence in yourself that you can solve this puzzle without someone else’s bad idea.
And if you are going to brainstorm with a team, do it after you’ve already tried your own solutions. Listen to what the other team members have to say, and don’t be afraid to tell everyone exactly what all your bad ideas were. You never know when your “bad idea” that didn’t work on the five puzzles you tried might actually work on a puzzle you haven’t tried, and a team member takes that and runs with it.
- 6Q) You’ve talked about teaming up with sponsors to create a TV show. This sounds exciting to have searchers out hunting for clues and coins! What reasons are you discovering that producers are reluctant to invest in such a project? Do you plan on pursuing the idea?
We are still working on it, and have had some promising contacts with some significant entities (being as vague as possible), but often they just don’t see things the way we do.
For example, one objection has been “but we aren’t following the teams around looking for treasure,” like every other reality show that has cameras following people around.
Our concept is that there are no casting sessions where we get ten teams, one is the retirees, one is the ex-athletes, one is the TikTok influencers, and so on. We’ve all seen that before. Boring. Our concept is that literally everyone in the country is eligible. Everyone is playing. You don’t have to go down to Hollywood or New York and audition, and make a cutesy intro video explaining why you’d be the bestest hunter ever. Our concept is, you’re in! You’re playing. No casting necessary.
And no cameras following people around. The coins are out there. Go find them. We’ve got hidden cameras or production teams waiting in those locations, but how can you follow millions of people on a treasure hunt? You don’t have to. They come to you!
We’ve still got locations and puzzles for every state in the nation for our TV project, as well as bonus locations, sponsored locations, special sponsorable puzzles, and so on.
It really will only take one key meeting with one key person who believes in the TV project, and it’s ready to go. Our Series Bible is over 35,000 words of puzzles, explanations, and we’ve even written the host’s dialogue. Other than the interviews of the winners, the scripts are already written.
But until that happens, buy the book, they mail on October 15, and have some fun!