The Beacon Star armchair treasure hunt book was published in the fall of 2017. It includes clues to a treasure within a fascinating story. But it wasn’t until September 2018 when the treasure searchers needed to find, by using the clues of the book, was confirmed. It is now known the treasure to The Beacon Star is $5,000 dollars, a gold coin, and an additional $1 for each book sold (added to the prize fund). (Book Available on Amazon)
What an Incredible Prize!
The details about this prize were revealed in a puzzle that the author, Randy Picshel, posted on the hunt’s Facebook Page. This puzzle was solved and shared on the MW Forum. The answer to the puzzle stated; “Five Thousand and Gold Coin Plus One”.
The puzzle was a bunch of overlapping and colorful triangles. Shown Below.
Searcher, Molnar (username), shared the method, with image, he used to solve for the message: (from Molnar)
I will agree with the author’s statement that the code is simple, once you know what is important. Both the colors of the sides and the triangles themselves are distracters. The only thing that matters is the locations of the vertices. The first thing to note is that the vertices are evenly spaced in the vertical direction. This implies a grid structure. One can construct a grid, with cells of size 20 pixels by 20 pixels, and overlay it on top of the triangles image, such that each vertex is in the center of a cell (within a +/- 2 pixel drawing error). Having done that, the vertices have a spread of 26 cells horizontally and 30 cells vertically, with each row of the grid containing one vertex. See the link below for an image.
Taking the columns to represent letters of the alphabet, the vertices then spell out a message from top to bottom: KNAJYMTZXFSIFSILTQIHTNSUQZXTSJ. This, of course, is not very helpful. But given how well the grid fits this drawing, it is assuredly the correct extraction method. So we look to see if this is some type of ciphertext. And after a bit of experimenting, one can see that a backwards shift of 5 gives the text: FIVETHOUSANDANDGOLDCOINPLUSONE. Why the extra step? Reasons, I guess. One could have come to this answer straight away by starting the alphabet used in the grid with a “V” instead of an “A”, but I saw no cluing to that effect in the text that accompanied the image.
Anyway, it’s not exactly clear how to interpret FIVE THOUSAND AND GOLD COIN PLUS ONE.
Randy Pischel later confirmed exactly what the message of the puzzle meant in an announcement. As mentioned above, he stated the prize of the Beacon Star is to be ‘Five Thousand (cash), a gold coin (which he bought a few years ago for $2200), and then $1 dollar will be added to the cash fund for each book sold!
Does the puzzle revealing the prize offer any help to solving the puzzles within the book? It is uncertain at this time. Discussions on the hunt can be found on the MW Forum. Join the adventures!
Best of luck with all that you seek! Always Treasure the Adventure!