In June 2022, The Incredible Hunt launched! Six Treasures, each worth $10,000 were hidden somewhere in the US. Clues to discover the locations of these incredible treasures are to be found within a box – available for purchase on the hunt’s website. Each box contains a set of Six Cards, and other hunt materials. A searcher needs to follow the path of clues for each hunt to claim the $10,000 cash treasure.
A few weeks into the hunt Card #6, with its treasure of $10,000, was solved. Treasure claimed. Following soon after, Mindy and Stealth broke the final code for Card #2. It, with the hunt’s map and poem, told them exactly where to find the treasure.
As of this writing, Two of the Six treasures have been claimed – however, there are still FOUR treasures, each with a $10,000 cash bounty, yet to find. It is NOT to late to join the adventures. Let’s hear the exciting story about Card #2! It might help YOU find the next one!
Six Questions on the Found Treasure of Card #2 The Wheel:
First a Question with Nick: The creator of The Incredible Hunt
- 1Q) We heard from your Twitter AMA that the search for the first treasure (Card #6), with two different teams on location at the same time to retrieve the treasure, was a bit intense. Was the discovery of the second treasure (Card #2) any less intense for you? How are you enjoying the Hunt to date? Is all going as planned or have there been surprises? How do you foresee the remaining four treasures to go down? Quickly or do you think these last four might take much longer to be solved?
Indiana was intense! No, Georgia was nothing like this. However, as a Creator, you’re always worried that someone unrelated to the game has found your proxy and removed it. When Mindy couldn’t find the Chest after a few hours, I started to get nervous. Then she brought out the metal detector and I believe it was found nearly instantly.
During our weekly puzzle games, I’ve been especially perplexed at how difficult some of the encoding was to break. For instance, I assumed 57, 14 would have been translated to a phone number in just a few minutes but it stumped 80 Hunters for several days until I dropped a Hint just to move the game along. I don’t understand why that particular encoding proved so difficult.
I’m enjoying things a bit too much. I enjoy interacting in the games so much that I hardly spend the requisite time required to continue building the platform and implementing all the great feedback I’m receiving from Hunters.
I believe the next four Chests are going to prove very difficult. Not because they are more difficult but because of momentum loss. At this point, most of the people still spending time solving a Card are stuck down the wrong rabbit hole. We’ve all seen that happen. Maybe one will be a surprise but I think the next three will take a year or longer.
Now, Five Questions with Mindy and Stealth: The Winners of Card #2!
- 2Q) A huge congrats on solving the clues of THE WHEEL (Card #2) and retrieving the $10,000 hidden treasure in The Incredible Hunt. You’ve been part of the treasure hunting community for a few years now and have been both: Creator and Hunter. Now you are a Finder! I’m sure each of these (creator, hunter, finder) is rewarding in different ways. How does it feel to be the second finder for one of the treasures in The Incredible Hunt?
Mindy: Thanks, Jenny! First of all, I want to say I wouldn’t have found it without my partner in Colorado, “Stealth.” He was the one that made the final breakthrough of the location, and I tied that location to the correct poem. We make a great team, and it felt absolutely FABULOUS to pull that plexiglass container out of the soil!
When Stealth texted me that afternoon, he said, “Want to go to Georgia?” It was about 5:30 pm, and James and I literally dropped everything and were on the road within 30 minutes of that text. Seven and a half hours later, at around 2:30 am, we checked into a hotel, and woke again at 5:00 am. We were on site by about 5:30 am or so, and it was dark and wet. After poking the ground with my bo staff for a while, we finally got that satisfying thud that told us our search was over. But yeah, totally amazing and what an adrenaline rush.
Nick doesn’t know this, and we only found out a day later, that the ground was covered in poison ivy or poison oak, or poison something. The rash was so severe we actually had to call teledoc to get treatment! But man, I would do it all over again in a heartbeat!!
- 3Q) Will you share what you enjoyed most about creating your own treasure hunt (which was valued over $5,000/since solved)? And also what do you enjoy most when on the chase for a treasure? Do you feel those past experiences helped you in solving Card #2 and retrieving the Treasure?
Mindy: To be honest, Candy was the brains behind Houses Asunder. We are both of Scottish ancestry, and we thought it would be cool to “unite” two previously opposing “houses” as a statement to the community to maybe get to know someone before judging them based on rumor or gossip. What I enjoyed most about that hunt was the friends I made along the way!
What do I enjoy most when on a chase for treasure? Since most treasures are history-related, I enjoy walking in the footsteps of the past and trying to see things the way that those who walked before me saw them. I love just imprinting the beauty and history of a place onto my brain. Memories are so important, and I think it’s important to place priorities on making memories over finding treasure, because when you think about it, no treasure can outweigh the memories made searching for it.
As for your third question, I’d have to say no, my past experiences didn’t really help except for recognizing the wordplay in the poem on the map. The last sentence contains “behind across,” and like many others, my mind immediately separated “across” into “a cross.”
- 4Q) Many searchers were stalled at the clue 2X7 on Card #2. What was it that caused the breakthrough; just continued attempts or something specific? Will you share the process for discovering the solution for Card #2?
Stealth: We were stumped on 2X7 for a long time. The real breakthrough came when another team solved the “The Final Step” card. We had solved it to “Paxton’s Cave” very early as an obvious anagram but knew that wasn’t correct. When we saw the “Patton’s Cave” solve and realized that “X” marks the spot we applied the same logic to 2X7.
We were staring at the phone number we have at that point which ended in 2837 which had been derived from the Beale Cipher #1. Thinking that “83” might be X we went back to the Beale Ciphers and quickly found that “83” in Beale Cipher 1 was the 7th value (zero indexed) and that in Beale Cipher #2 the 7th value was 17. It fit really nicely that 2X7 meant both Beale Cipher #2, 7th value and “17” plugged into the place of the “83” or “X” in the phone number to give us 2177.
As soon as we called that we heard the message with the numbers that spelled out the location on the Wheel card and we were off to retrieve the chest.
- 5Q) As a well known figure in the treasure hunt community, what do you enjoy most about the overall hobby?
Mindy: What I love the most is the challenge. I’m not an expert cipher breaker (but I did just buy your book so I’m learning), but being a high functioning autistic, I tend to recognize patterns on sight and also think and problem solve differently than most “normal” people. And I think that sometimes gives me a slight advantage but can also admittedly be a hindrance in other ways.
- 6Q) Do you have any advice for those just getting started on the Cards, or in the Armchair Treasure Hunting hobby in general?
Stealth: The best advice for an armchair hunt is to try to think the way that the puzzle designer is thinking. Nick has used a symmetry like 2X7 in his other puzzles so it made sense to apply it to this case. Of course, it hasn’t helped us much yet with the four remaining cards. “X marks the spot” seems to be a key theme though and we wouldn’t be surprised to see something like that used again.
