Thanksgiving day 2020 marked the end of an over decade search for the Golden Key of the Fandango armchair treasure hunt. For years searchers had enjoyed examining text, scrutinizing small details in illustrations, and researching possible clues that would lead them to the hidden location of a $10,000 treasure. But alas, it was not to be claimed. Pel Stockwell, the creator of Fandango, had to reveal the elusive solution to searchers himself.

Since the release of the book in 2007, pages upon pages of posts on the MW Forum discussed what the solution might have entailed.  Ideas ranged from color codes to number ciphers to almost anything imaginable. Interestingly, even the actual method used to solve the hunt was discussed, but the exact details couldn’t be put into place. The Golden Key went undiscovered.

Nonetheless, the adventures experienced by searchers over the years are treasured, and the actual prize of $10,000 cash will go to various charities. So while the precise treasure of the Golden Key wasn’t found, many other types of treasures were discovered, appreciated, and will be cherished. 

Might there be another hunt to enjoy by Pel?  Let’s ask about that and more!  Enjoy!

Six Questions with Pel:

  • 1Q) Thank you so much for taking time to chat with MW, Pel.  For over 13 years, my family and I worked on Fandango. I’m sure it will be missed by not only myself, but others. Will you too miss the thought of the hidden Key, worth $10,000, waiting to be found? What had you enjoyed most about the hunt over these past years?

What I enjoyed most about the hunt was the process of creating the illustrations, but once the book was released, I enjoyed receiving correspondence and solutions. I did not intend this to be an ‘interactive’ hunt and I did not monitor the treasure hunting websites or group chats that were mentioned to me. Initially there were not many submissions, though towards the end the numbers increased. I thought the riddle would be solved and it seemed like a few readers were getting close which made it exciting.

  • 2Q) Before creating Fandango, had you personally worked on any other armchair treasure hunts like A Treasure’s Trove, The Secret, Masquerade, etc.? Of the many ventures you could have chosen to pursue, what inspired you to create the Fandango Treasure Hunt?

As I have mentioned, Treasure hunts were a common pastime during my youth. I think the parents in our community primarily put them together to get us out of. the house for as long as possible. And then we children started to test how clever we could be among ourselves and would create our own. The only armchair hunt I worked on was Masquerade. ‘Worked on’ might be a stretch as I never made it past the obvious riddles but I loved the artwork and how there was so much activity in each illustration.

Prior to Fandango , I was unaware of the various treasure hunting groups or websites (the internet was still relatively new to me and even now I spend little time on it). I am a painter ( in my spare time) and I have always wanted to create a children’s book which is how FANDANGO started. I remembered MASQUERADE and liked the idea that having a treasure hunt as part of a book would make the reader pay more attention to the book. I am still painting, creating illustrations, thinking of another project.

  • 3Q) As they say, hindsight is always 2020; It is for both searchers and creators of armchair treasure hunts. The balance between making a hunt too easy or too difficult, or, too obscure or too obvious, is a challenging puzzle in itself.  What expectations had you had for the hunt? What surprised you most about how searchers were chasing after it?

It is difficult to find the balance between making a hunt too easy or too difficult. Maybe now with such a wide acceptance of the internet, some sort of interactive hunt (releasing clues from time to time) would help that balance. My approach was to try and keep the riddle simple and I thought visual clues would be an easier presentation. I thought once readers recognized the compass, the points of the star and the folding to join the red and yellow points, they would see the numbers. I guess that was obvious to me since I put them there. Yes, I should have made the ‘ones’ more obvious and in hindsight I should have provided some sort of written confirmer. The idea to have to fold the pages came from seeing that techniques in other art projects and my time spent with Mad Magazine as a kid. I played with other ideas, such as having to fold all the pages and creating a kaleidoscope image, cutting out and piecing together certain images, but I thought this would be too complicated. As for directions to fold the pages, there were none. It was a visual game. But I tried to hint at the folding with the phrase “two together . a treasure found” on the last illustration.

Thinking that the solution would be obvious once the use of the compass rose was discovered, most of the book was meant as a distraction from the riddle. I thought that by displaying the compass on the back cover, most readers would discount this, skip over it, and focus on all that was going on in the illustrations. While these were meant as distractions from the solution, they were also meant to connect readers with the book and with the island. I had a lot of fun painting the illustrations and hiding things, keys, people, references to the island. But clearly there were too many distractions.


One of my big ‘distractions’ was following the “Masquerade” format. Not everyone might have read the book but I was certain some would have known about it. I acknowledged the book by spelling the name with the squares. I assumed some readers would try to follow the same patterns that were in that book – the borders, the letters. Colored letters spell out words and phrases but these, being so obvious, were all meant as distractions, distractions from a key piece of the riddle, the stars, which were also part of the border.

There have been some comments that the location should have been spelled out and that the use of longitude and latitude required knowledge beyond the norm. I suppose it does. As you know, when creating a hunt there are an infinite number of possibilities on how and where to hide something and I thought using co- ordinates would be a generally accepted method of marking a location.

The book went through a few drafts. Initially I had written the text but I didn’t think it did the illustrations justice or fully captured the adventure of the story. That is when I asked my brother if he could write a poem to go along with the illustrations. Given the length of his poem, I then added a few additional illustrations. There have been questions about the meaning of SPF on the flag pole on page 17. This illustration was poking fun at some of the ‘old wealth’ and big homes that are on the island. In the first draft, the character was presented as Sumner Prescott Fairchild – SPF. My brother did not include any name in his poem. The flag was connected to character and I decided to leave it in. It has also been pointed out that there should have been an American flag atop the flagpole. I did not leave it out for any reason, just a complete oversight on my part.

I understand people’s disappointment and wanting a more elaborate sexy solution as has been suggested. I think I got caught up in the process and was somewhat blinded by knowing the clues and thinking they were easier to put together, and therefore creating too many distractions.

  • 4Q) Is it correct in saying that except for those specific items mentioned in the Solution’s PDF, all other anomalies, mini puzzles, hidden images, and other fun things searchers found, either in text or illustrations of the book, were intended distractions or coincidental discoveries by searchers? In other words, had you only deliberately placed those particular clues specified in the PDF to lead a searcher to the riddle and treasure?

(Answer included with 3’s answer above)

  • 5Q) In the timeframe of Fandango (2007-2020), the Forrest Fenn treasure hunt was released and it’s million dollar treasure found (2010-2020). Had you followed the hunt of Forrest Fenn? As a manager of a leading Treasure Hunt website and forum, Fandango and the Forrest Fenn hunt were two key Chases which have now ended. Have you considered producing another hunt? I know that during Fandango, searchers had discovered other ‘Follow the x’ domains. Can you share some of what your plans were for those other domains? Might they still be in play?

I was not aware of the Forrest Fenn hunt until recently -or any of the other hunts that readers mentioned to me. Fandango took a fair bit of time to create. I started it before I had a family when I had ‘extra time.’ At the time, I thought I might put together more than one hunt and so registered some other followthe x domains. As my children are almost all grown now, I am waiting to see if I will get that ‘extra time’ back …and maybe put those domains to use.

  • 6Q) Thank you for the years of treasure hunting fun! What else are you off to enjoy? What other hobbies or clever aspirations do you have? And do you have anything more to say to those searchers who enjoyed 13 years of adventures provided within pages of your book?

I want to thank everyone who bought the book. Hopefully you enjoyed the book as well as the hunt, and hopefully you had a chance to visit MDI or someday will. It is a magical island.( As for the website, I have been working on trying to update the site (with hired help). I am told the original code no longer works and when trying to add to it , it “crashed” but we are working on getting the above posted.)


While no individual claimed the prize, since the End-date, over $10,000 (the treasure) has been donated to the following charities:
Jessup Memorial Library, Northeast Harbor Library, Southwest Harbor Library, Raising A Reader, Mass Historical Society, Bar Harbor Historical Society, Open Table, Turtle Ridge Foundation, Acadia Wildlife Fund, Summer Festival of the Arts, Maine Seacoast Mission.