Legend Has It is not just one treasure hunt, it is a treasure hunt website with a series of treasure hunts coming your way! The first hunt has been released. It is called Dead Man’s Gold and takes place in Arizona. The cost to participate in the hunt is $40. This will provide you with all the clues necessary, via a PDF download, to track down the location of a ‘key’ to claim the cash prize! There is no end date, and the prize, which is a cash treasure, grows as more and more players participates. As of this writing it is near $2000!
Let’s learn more from Nate and Andy about the Legend Has It treasure hunts!
Six Questions:
- 1Q) Thanks Andy and Nate for participating in Six Questions! I love the concept and title of ‘Legend Has It…’ Congrats on your launch. You both have led quite adventurous lives to date, so what inspired you to come together and decide to build Legend Has It? Had it been in your minds for a while or had the thought presented itself and you both jumped right on it?
We have always enjoyed puzzles and challenging mind games, so when we learned about Forrest Fenn’s treasure hunt, we were instantly hooked. When it ended, we felt like we had been gut-punched. The thrill of the chase was immediately replaced with a sickening sense of loss. Not a loss of the treasure, but a loss of adventure. Almost right away we decided that we did not want it to end and we decided to get that thrill and adventure back by taking matters into our own hands.
A whopping two days later and we had decided to start a company which provided not just one treasure hunt, but a whole series of hunts. In fact, if things play out well, we plan to have multiple hunts going at any given moment for the foreseeable future. What we really want to do is provide a home where the thrill of the chase and adventure could live and thrive. A place where once one hunt was solved, a person could instantly start on the next.
- 2Q) In creating Legend Has It, how much research do you do for each hunt? How long does it take you from idea to release, on a hunt? Do you work the story or decide on a ‘KEY’ first? Can you share some of the processes?
We do very extensive research. Since we never know beforehand what clues we will incorporate into a legend we need to absorb huge quantities of information in preparation to writing it. From a large pool of potential clues that we can use, we select those that can fit thematically with the legend and that can support an interesting story. Then we down select these clues further by eliminating those that may be too easy, or too difficult. It is a delicate balancing act. Aside from our individual research underlying Dead Man’s Gold, we are sure we spent more than 100 hours discussing and refining the legend before we were happy with it.
With Dead Man’s Gold and an undisclosed future hunt, we had selected a key before writing the legend, but with the next hunt we are reversing that process, writing the bulk of the legend first.
- 3Q) From home, how close can the solving of clues in the Hunt Documents get a searcher to the ‘Key’? For instance, before heading out for BOTG, can all clues be solved to know exactly where to go to find the ‘Key’ from ‘the armchair’? Or are there clues in the PDF documents that need realized and worked out once BOTG? Do the clues, that can be solved from home, only get you to the park, for example, and then once there, with BOTG, you have to solve more, to move closer, so to find the “Key’?
This is a question we get a lot. Everyone wants to know how much they can do from home. For reasons we hope you will understand, we cannot really answer that without potentially revealing clues. However, this is not the main reason for not answering. We at Legend Has It are striving to provide people with a reason to escape into the outdoors and have a genuine and unique adventure. Puzzles are fun to solve at home, but the treasure hunting adventure is incomplete until you are BOTG. We do not want to rob any of the opportunity to make new memories while exploring some of the most beautiful country Mother Nature has to offer. In our minds, the treasure is not the reward money at the end. Instead, the real treasure is the memories, the adventure, the experiences. If everyone who joins our hunts goes outside and searches, then we have won.
- 4Q) What do you feel is the most difficult aspect of your hunts? Can someone completely new to treasure hunting pick up a PDF and understand how to solve the clues? How much knowledge of codes and ciphers, of legends, of anything, is needed? What percentage of the clues would you estimate to be ‘interpretational’ (like FF’s poem), how much ‘exact’ (like breaking a code); how much other (like intuition)?
One cannot really say what is the most difficult aspects of the hunts we have created and are creating, a clue that may be challenging to some may be straightforward to others. We cannot delve into the specifics of what types of clues you will find nor what you need to study/understand (e.g. code breaking). That said, we do strive to make deciphering the legend accessible to a wide audience. We can say that our goals for these hunts are twofold:
- To make people learn new things. This applies to new and seasoned treasure hunters alike. We are designing our hunts around compelling legends to make the learning fun and exciting.
- To get people outdoors and exploring this beautiful world. Exploring outside is healthy, exhilarating, and rewarding in its own right, but sometimes we need a little incentive to get out there and reward our minds and bodies with the experience.
- 5Q) You say you both came in late to Forrest Fenn’s Thrill of the Chase treasure hunt, but really enjoyed it. Have you worked on other treasure hunts since then? Had you worked on any treasure hunts or related research before creating Legend Has It? Had you ever found treasure? (besides your family of course)
We did indeed start late into Forrest Fenn’s hunt, but boy was it a lot of fun while it lasted. Forrest was the one who drew us into the world of treasure hunting, and as was mentioned in the answer to question one, we only waited two days before we began building Legend Has It. We have read the clues to some hunts and followed others as we began to learn what makes a good hunt. Now, all our free time is Legend Has It time. We are fully engrossed in the legends that we are creating, which itself is a thrill and adventure of its own.
As for what treasure we have found. You nailed it right on the head when you mentioned our families. You won’t find two guys who are happier with their families anywhere on earth. And yes, we realize we are saying that to a whole community of sleuths. To any doubters we say, “Good Luck!”. Aside from that, Legend Has It has really transformed itself and has become not just a business idea, but a true labor of love. It keeps us up at night and wakes us up in the mornings as ideas and new stories begin to form in our heads. Our discussions become lively and animated as legends begin to form and take shape. This is our treasure. Don’t get us wrong, we’d love to find actual treasure, but it is a lot of fun now to watch people find treasure in all the places we didn’t.
- 6Q) What are you enjoying most about Legend Has It? What can searchers be looking forward to in the coming weeks, months, years ahead? What are you looking forward to and see for Legend Has It? Anything else you’d like to add/say?
The thing we enjoy the most in building and running Legend Has It, is the very same thing that people enjoy by joining the hunts, namely, we are learning tons and finding ourselves exploring nature together. In the near term, we are currently working on our second and third hunts, which are both in North America. We aim to have the next hunt available by the start of summer, and the subsequent hunt ready shortly afterward. In the longer term, we really do hope to create many hunts over the coming years and to spread geographically around the globe. We already have flights for Europe that are pending the lifting of travel restrictions! To join the hunts and become a legend head over to www.legendhasit.net, and to stay up to date with hunts follow us on social media @legendhasit.awesome.
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In case you missed them- MW Spotlight #4- Lost Treasures: The Goonies Map and other Movie Props, MW Spotlight #5: Can you Solve the Cipher and Claim the Treasure, and MW Spotlight #6: Top Ten Locations to Find Valuable Gemstones?