Posted by 
Join the adventures in the Amnesia Treasure Hunt! (Discussions on the MW Discord)
Quill and Compass – creators of successful BookShop treasure hunt – have released another treasure hunt! How exciting! The hunt was released in June (2025) and is fully armchair – meaning not only the puzzles, but claiming the treasure, can be done all from home! Let’s learn more!
Six Questions with Quill and Compass:
- 1Q) Congrats on releasing another armchair treasure hunt book! What a great achievement. Please share how someone can get involved in Amnesia – and what treasure they could claim.
Thank you! Amnesia: A Treasure Hunt is available on Amazon. The prize package worth $1,000, includes a chest with copper and silver coins, hand-crafted jewelry, engraved Treasure Hunter coins, a book, and a special mystery prize we know the winner will enjoy. A photo of the treasure is posted in our Instagram feed.
- 2Q) Your first hunt, The Bookshop, was solved successfully! What did you learn during that process and hunt? Did you apply any of the experience gained towards this new hunt? If so, what?
We were thrilled with the great response to The Bookshop. People are still buying copies in order to see how our puzzles might work, which is a smart move. We had already started discussing ideas for Amnesia while The Bookshop was being solved.
We learned how clever and quick the treasure hunting community can be – individual hunters and teams. We also learned how people approach solving the puzzles. It’s always surprising to see which puzzles are solved first and which ones the readers struggle over. We used our observations to guide us in structuring the project, and to ramp up the challenges when possible. We also added a short section of bonus puzzles at the back of the book (The BOB puzzles), totally unrelated to the main hunt, just to provide added fun and practice after the prize has been claimed. We loved the response from the puzzles we embedded in the front and back cover of The Bookshop, so we continued that practice with Amnesia.
- 3Q) How would you compare Amnesia’s difficulty of puzzles to The Bookshop’s? What do you feel was the most difficult puzzle in that hunt?
We received a fully correct solution to The Bookshop in just over two months after its release. We feel we made Amnesia a bit more challenging in several ways so that more people have the opportunity to participate, even if they purchase the book after the release date.
We designed the end Meta section of The Bookshop to be the most challenging, and it did prove to be that. Without revealing any hints or clues, we hope that Amnesia readers find the Meta section to be at least as challenging.
- 4Q) How do you choose your puzzles to include in a hunt? Also how do you balance difficulty – making it challenging but not discouraging? Do you feel someone new to the hobby has an equal chance of winning? (to those deep into the hobby and/or have formed teams).
We keep an ongoing list of puzzle ideas — some sparked by other treasure hunts, others by research, or just random inspiration. Themes are an important part of how we structure the books. Though it might help a bit to pick up previous hunts we have created, we like to think that anyone has the opportunity successfully solve this hunt. We purposely work in all levels and varieties of puzzles, so that even if you don’t win the prize, we hope you will have fun a-ha moments and still be able to grow your skills. Surprisingly, sometimes puzzles that were designed to be easily solved ended up being harder to crack, and the more difficult ones were sometimes solved early on.
While teams appear to have better odds because there are multiple people all working at the same time, single hunters have surprised us with their solo efforts. In the end, we believe anyone has a genuine shot at winning.
- 5Q) What advice do you have for puzzlers? They have the book, worked on a few things, but are now wondering what to do next? What should they do? What do you do in hunts when unsure of the next steps?
We can’t remind people enough – READ the book. Our goal has always been to encourage reading along with the puzzle-solving. The text is equally important to the puzzles. We also try to design puzzles logically, so if you pay attention to visual and text clues, and then look at the book as a whole, you will develop the skills you need to solve our hunts. We still like to throw in some surprises, though, to keep it interesting!
- 6Q) Amnesia is your second book and hunt – is there a 3rd in the works?
Yes! We’re already working on our next book, which we plan to release this fall. It has a really fun and unique theme. We are also exploring the idea of some surprises in-between book releases in order to keep the momentum going, so be sure to follow our Instagram account and watch our emails for news on that. We love the great response we have received so far and are thrilled to build a following based on fun, educational treasure hunt puzzle books.
Amnesia Treasure Hunt – Available on Amazon
