David Jacobsen has offered readers an exciting challenge!  Somewhere in the United States, a hidden treasure chest waits to be found! Clues to where this treasure is located are given in the armchair treasure hunting book, The Hatter’s Hat. As we learned in a previous Six Questions, if you can solve the clues and follow them like a map to a secreted treasure chest, which holds a golden key, YOU can use that key to claim a prize valued at over $10,000!

Readers of The Hatter’s Hat, a prequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, have followed Mary Ann, the Rabbit’s housemaid, down the rabbit hole in search of the treasure – but to no avail. Yet.  

It was a great pleasure to chat with David and ask how the hunt is going. I appreciate his time in sharing with us some of his thoughts.  Enjoy!  

Six Questions with David:

  • 1Q) The one year anniversary of The Hatter’s Hat is November 26, 2021.  Congrats on creating a fun, long lasting, and challenging puzzle. Will you share how the hunt is going? Any surprises? Had you released a clue because you felt searchers were all lost and needed a map to try to get them back on track, or was it more of a ‘thank you’ for taking part in the adventures?

Thank you Jenny for that question. Overall, I would say the hunt has been going extremely well. I’ve received many wonderful emails from people having a lot of fun looking for the treasure and enjoying the book. And fun is what it’s all about. Many more people have participated than I originally expected, which has been encouraging. I think the biggest surprise has been that no one (to my knowledge) has correctly identified a very important clue. I released the poem to help searchers. You still need the book to nail down the precise location of the treasure chest, but the poem and map can be a significant source of help in narrowing down the general search area. You can get there just using the information from the book, but the poem can be an additional source of help.

  • 2Q) Back in early 2021, you had also released a fully armchair treasure hunt, The Mad Tea Party. In this book there were 3 riddles. Two riddles have since been solved and prizes claimed. Is the last riddle much more difficult to solve, or just being elusive? What do you think? Will you share thoughts about this hunt? Can searchers still get involved in the puzzling fun?

Yes, The Mad Tea Party Treasure Hunt was released to give people who were hesitant to travel due to the pandemic an opportunity to participate in a fun Wonderland style treasure hunt. It’s fully armchair as you mention, and people are having fun with it. The final puzzle remaining to be solved was not intended to be more difficult than the rest, but it seems to be turning out that way. And, yes, people can still get involved, since the final puzzle has not yet been solved.

  • 3Q) Treasure Hunters have been searching coast to coast for the hidden Hatter’s Hat treasure. From a previous Six Questions, we learned searchers can solve the clues, for a very precise location, from the comfort of their home, at any time. But can the Key used to claim the treasure be retrieved any time of year, 24/7, safely and legally? (barring unexpected disasters (weather or other related) that might happen in the area)

Thank you Jenny for that question. The chest with the key in it is not hidden in a dangerous place. And it is legal to retrieve the key from the area where I hid it. Safety and compliance with laws is of paramount importance. I don’t want to talk about whether the chest can be retrieved during this or that time of year because that would reveal too much information, given the varying climates of the U.S., and I’ve already said enough in my opinion to assist searchers. Searching in the mountains in winter can be unnecessarily dangerous, so if you do plan on searching somewhere that experiences cold winters, please use good judgment. And always bring a friend along for added safety.

  • 4Q) In the previous Six Questions you had also mentioned the clues could validate themselves. Is this clue validation similar to the discovered acrostic of The Hatter’s Hat, in the way there can be no doubt of intention? (this acrostic was shared on the MW Forum by user ForestBlight).  Or can you explain the process or type of ‘validation’ of the clues? Is ‘interpretation’ part of the validation process?

I wasn’t aware that an acrostic had been discovered. I’m going to have to Google that now. Ha. But to answer your question…once you discover the clues, they hit you, and you say “Wow – nice! Okay, I’ve got that one figured out,” without any doubts. The trick is finding the clues, and then figuring out where they lead you next. The form of validation may be different each time, but it will be there if you know where to look.

  • 5Q) You mentioned the clues in the book will be like a map leading you to the treasure. Can you say whether they are given in order, or are they scattered throughout the book? Will searchers know without a doubt they have a piece of the ‘map’, so to speak.

There is a logical order to it – a method to the madness. When people discover the first important clue I would recommend they follow it to where it leads – it is a clue after all, and clues are designed to help guide your search. When searchers do this successfully, after a few clues, they will have a map, and they will absolutely know it when they have it.

  • 6Q) What are you enjoying most in the treasure hunt? What are you enjoying least? Have your expectations for the projects met your expectations? Do you plan to do more in the future?

The thrill for me, as the treasure hunt creator, has been a vicarious one. I am enjoying how much fun other people are having with the hunt, watching from the sidelines like a proud parent on game day. The projects have exceeded my expectations. It has been wonderful to see so many people having fun getting out into nature. To me that has always been the true treasure – an excuse to get out into the great outdoors and look behind a rock, or under a tree, not knowing what you may find. It’s the journey, not the destination, that is most enjoyable in life.

I do plan on doing more of these in the future – as long as people continue to have fun with it and continue to be safe. As a matter of fact, I just released a new treasure hunt based on Treasure Island. I always loved that book, and I wanted to set a real-world treasure hunt within the secondary world Stevenson created. This new hunt is a foray and window into a much bigger project I am currently working on. I’m hoping the Treasure Island treasure hunt will bring joy, distraction, and a sense of adventure to people in these crazy times we’re living in, and I’m hopeful it will help some people to discover, or perhaps to rediscover, Stevenson’s classic work of fiction.