After almost exactly two years The Golden Oyster armchair treasure hunt is solved! Congrats to Dan Worthington, a first time puzzler, who put the final clues together and discovered where the Golden Oyster was hidden. He will receive the ‘Golden Oyster’ and over $1,000 in cash!
Jo Bartley released The Golden Oyster armchair treasure hunt in May of 2020. The hunt was fully armchair – in that the hidden location of the golden oyster only needed to be submitted via email. A searcher did not need to physically visit the location to claim the prize. In a previous Six Questions, Jo shared, “It’s not really a big secret that 21 of the pages reveal 21 locations in my town. The trick is to work out how they reveal the eventual location of the treasure.” Dan accomplished just that!
Dan had plotted each of the 21 locations on a map which formed a gridded area. He then realized, by utilizing other clues from the puzzle, that he needed to create a X on the map by using 4 churches as end points for the X. The churches were within a plotted area hinted to in the puzzle. The X marked the spot! The Golden Oyster was hidden in Westmeads Recreation Grounds in Whitstable. (Full Solution posted on The Golden Oyster Website)
Heartfelt congrats to Dan! Let’s hear more about his adventures in the following Six Questions:
Six Questions with Dan:
- 1Q) Congrats on solving The Golden Oyster armchair treasure hunt! What attracted you to this particular hunt, and how long did you work on trying to find the correct solution?
Thank you, it was certainly a tricky hunt. I didn’t actually know that armchair treasure hunting was a thing, so I sort of stumbled across the golden oyster. I was looking into the book Masquerade as my mum had a copy and I used to like looking through the pages when I was younger, from there I found that there were many other hunts that were still around, I was surprised at this as I thought that masquerade was a ‘one off’.
I eventually ended up on a forum for The Golden Owl, which had the golden oyster advertised, so I looked into it a bit more and thought I’d give it a go. As for the solution, I think it took me around 6 months to solve it, but I did have a lot of help and inspiration from the MW forum 🙂
- 2Q) Can you share some of your ‘aha moments’ and how you came up with the solution to claim the treasure?
In all honesty, I had a lot of wrong ‘aha’ moments when I thought I had solved it but was going in the complete wrong direction! I spent a lot of time positioning the Golden oyster logo over the map of locations and I got several answers from that but all of them were dead ends.
I’d say the biggest realisation was when I realised that the key, on page 1, wasn’t showing a measurement of 15cm, instead it was showing a halfway measurement. The same thing occurred in the additional clue, the spider had purple paint dripping from it, and the purple paint splodge was exactly halfway between the eye of the needle and the spider.
I also knew that the line between the eye of the needle and the spider, on each page intersected the painting, and this is when I realised that the paintings were a lot more important than I first thought.
- 3Q) What do you feel was the trickiest part of the solution for you?
I would definitely say that the step after solving all the pages was the hardest step, I had 21 locations and had no clue what to do with them haha.
- 4Q) What did you enjoy most while working on the hunt?
I’d say that I enjoyed all the research I did into Whitstable, it’s a town that I didn’t know much about, so I genuinely did enjoy learning all about it whilst trying to find the oyster.
- 5Q) Would you offer any advice for those just getting started in the hobby of armchair treasure hunting?
Haha I think that’s an interesting question. I feel that I have far less experience than most of the seasoned treasure hunters I’ve seen on the forum, especially since this was my first hunt. So I would advise them to just have fun, participate in the forum, and approach everything with an open mind 🙂
- 6Q) How long have you enjoyed armchair treasure hunting? Do you plan to work on other hunts or puzzles?
Not long at all, the golden oyster was my first hunt so I’d say I’ve only been involved with hunts for 6 months, I definitely enjoy them though, and I’ll certainly be trying to solve another one soon 🙂
