The Cracked Treasure Hunt
“Crack the code and join the greatest treasure hunt of all time!” The previous comment is on the back of CRACKED, available on Amazon. The near 150 page book by Professor F includes a challenge to discover 12 Keywords within its captivating story. If you can solve the puzzle, you can use the 12 Keywords to claim a wallet holding Bitcoin cryptocurrency. This wallet is currently valued around $15,000, and is expected to grow.
If you are not familiar with cryptocurrency, no matter. You can still enjoy chasing after the clues to pin down the 12 Keywords of the puzzle. Treasure awaits to be claimed in this exciting treasure hunt. Two of the words have been revealed already, and as more and more people get involved in the Cracked Community (discussions happening on the MW Forum), more words will be confirmed as well!
So let’s learn more about Professor F, his book, the Bitcoin Treasure Hunt, and how YOU can join the adventures! Who will claim the wallet? Enjoy!
Six Questions with Professor F:
- 1Q) Congrats on CRACKED! Excellent book in itself. I would recommend anyone to pick up a copy for the enjoyment of the story alone. The treasure hunt and challenge to discover keywords is simply a bonus. Although it will soon be a year since launch, I know many are just getting started. Will you share what inspired you to write the book, and how those just hearing about this exciting adventure can get involved?
First, I want to say thank you for taking the time to read the book, and I am glad that you enjoyed the story. As a professor, I am always looking for ways to get people to read. I think that it is so easy to turn on the television or to pick up the phone to scroll through some TikTok videos, only to get lost for hours at a time, and I feel like we as a nation are becoming more distant from one of our most valuable skills, reading. I constantly ask myself, “How can I encourage people to read?” One night when I was in bed, right before I was about to fall asleep, I thought, “I can use the ‘keywords’ or a ‘seed phrase’ from a bitcoin wallet to encourage people to read.”
That idea is what inspired me to write the story, but the process of actually writing the story was very strange. The very next morning, after I thought about attaching a bitcoin wallet to a story, I woke up at 4am, and I started writing. There was a voice, and it wasn’t my voice in my head, but a voice that kept telling me what to write, how to write it, what to say, and this voice is who we know as Nyx, the main character. I woke up every morning at 4am and didn’t stop writing until 7pm, every single day for weeks and weeks. It was almost like I was a vessel, and this character wrote the story through me. I’ve written a lot of academic papers, and everyone of those papers were written by me, through me, but I really feel as if Nyx wrote this story through my fingertips.
People can get involved in this adventure by following my YouTube channel. I have already given out 2 of the 12 words it that takes to unlock the wallet. People can find both the book and the YouTube channel by searching online “Professor F Cracked.” I also think that it’s important for people to know that whatever funds the book makes, it goes back into the bitcoin wallet. As I said before, I want to encourage people to read, and the bigger the wallet gets, my hopes are that more people will read the story.
- 2Q) Is the discovery method for each Keyword self-contained for each chapter? To clarify- are all clues/verifiers for a Keyword in the chapter it is found in? Or might clues for a Keyword be found anywhere in the book? And to confirm, is there one Keyword found specifically in each of the 12 chapters? And if so, is the correct order of words to retrieve the wallet in exact relation to the chapters the Keywords are found in?
Each chapter contains a keyword. There are 12 words, and there are 12 chapters. When I first started writing the story, I really had no idea how I was going to incorporate the words into a meaningful hunt. I was kind of winging it. I wanted the words to be special, and I wanted the reader to have a variety of skills to crack the code. I wanted the reader to think outside of the box in some cases. Some of the skills are but not limited to things like knowing what bilabial terms are or the obvious binary codes and Caesar ciphers. There might be one or two chapters where the “verifiers” are in a previous chapter, and that is earlier on when I was just getting familiar with incorporating the words into the hunt. However, I don’t want anyone to worry because I am well aware of the difficulty that these words might be, and I am going to give two words out at the end of my teaching semesters, which are June and December of the year. The chapters that I will not be giving out the words for are going to be chapter 4, 5, 9, 10, and 11 because I know that these are self-explanatory. With a keen eye, the reader will be able to pick those up. There is a puzzle that will help readers put the words in order to retrieve the wallet.
- 3Q) I know you have said the book is fictional. However, there is a lot of heartwarming, thoughtful, and insightful perspectives. I loved reading it. Will you share what some of the stories mean to you? Was writing a book, and including a treasure hunt aspect, in thoughts before COVID? Had you worked on other armchair treasure hunts, or written other stories?
I have never written an armchair treasure hunt, nor have I ever heard of that term before. I didn’t think of the idea until the nation shut down because of Covid. There are some aspects of the story that relate to my life, like the Marine Corps. I was in the Marines Corps, but I never went to bootcamp in Paris Island, and I was never in Intelligence. I did get an email from a Marine who was in Intelligence, and he said that I got everything spot on, which really warms my heart because it means that all the research that I put into the story paid off. I didn’t have anyone from the CIA reach out to me yet to see if I was close on that part, but maybe one day someone will reach out to me to tell me if I was close. Even though Nyx drove the story, there are some personal things that I believe that are in the story, like I don’t think that it is appropriate for pharmaceutical companies to advertise drugs on TV to “ask your doctor about” nor I am not a fan of big government spying on citizens, but I think that Nyx agrees with that too.
- 4Q) It has been confirmed by you that the word LOVE is the Keyword found in Chapter 12. Is there a way a searcher can independently confirm each Keyword of a chapter as they progress? Or do they have to wait until they think they have all 12 to test in the wallet? If it opens, all 12 are correct. But if it doesn’t open, is there a way to know which one (or more) is wrong or right? Are the Keywords ‘words’ only? Or can the Keywords involve numbers, abbreviations, acrostics, etc.?
When you enter the Keywords to unlock the wallet, they are words, not numbers, abbreviations, etc. The only way that someone can tell if he or she has the correct words is by unlocking the entire wallet. The reader will not be able to know what the words to chapters 7, 9, 10 truly are without unlocking the wallet.
- 5Q) Can you clarify what is the difference between a verifier (or identifier) and clue for a Keyword? Or are they the same to you? In at least one of your Documentary Videos on your YouTube channel you provided a hint. Was this hint one of the actual 12 Words needed for the wallet? Can you explain what type of hints you are planning to cryptically release outside of the book? Would someone who is fully focusing on the book be at a disadvantage in the treasure hunt?
I have been kind of meshing the words “verifier” and “clue” together, and please forgive me because this is my first hunt, but the way I look at the verifier is like the shape of the heart that verifies the word love for chapter 12. I was giving “clues” on my YouTube posts, which was the actual word “love.” When I first started, I wanted clues to be like, “There are 12 chapters in the book, and there are 12 words to unlock the Bitcoin wallet,” meaning that there is a word in each chapter, and they aren’t all lumped into one chapter.
However, my idea of “clues” turned into me putting the actual word, in subliminal form, in a documentary, which some people picked up on and got. I was very shocked because it is a literal flash of the word. If you want to find out for yourself, go to my YouTube page and watch the documentary about Edward Bernays and see if you can see the flash of the word “love.” If a person decides to fully focus on the book, he or she shouldn’t be at a disadvantage because the answers are there. The only disadvantage that they would have is that those who follow the YouTube channel will get some of the words, but that doesn’t mean that a person who just reads the book can’t unlock the wallet without the YouTube videos.
I think that I have to be more creative when I plan to cryptically release more outside the book. I think that the subliminal message was too easy, and I don’t really have anything up my sleeves at the moment about what I am going to release and when, but I am sure in the future, something will come out, but it will be on a social media platform. I think that it is unfair to answer any questions when people email me, so I don’t respond to emails, nor would I ever assign the book in my classroom because I don’t want anyone to be at an advantage. However, I think that it would be a great classroom text, and I encourage all teachers to look at the book to see if they would like to encourage their students to read.
- 6Q) What are you enjoying most about the treasure hunt and the searchers reading your book? Have you had any surprises along the way? Now that the fun challenge to find the Keywords has been released, are you willing to let it go unsolved for over 40 years like other hunts have gone, if it happens that way? Or what are your plans?
I really enjoy when people say things like, “This is a great book” or “It is genius and a work of art.” The “genius” and “work of art” comment came from the chair of an English department at a community college in Kentucky. That, as a writer, made me feel great, and she offered me a job to teach a course, which I am doing right now, and I am going to use half of what I earn from that course to put into the Cracked Community wallet. I feel like some people, much like the chair from the English department, are reading the book and finding a treasure of their own within the book. I really don’t want it to last 40 years. Heck, by that time, there might be a supercomputer that will crack the code and all will be lost. I want someone to crack it, a human, and I hope whoever cracks the code gives back to the community in a meaningful way, much like Nyx does in the story.
Thank you for taking time to share with us!
