Treasure Island Treasure Hunt Solved! In November of 2021, the Treasure Island Treasure Hunt edition by David Jacobsen was released. Anyone who could find and solve the clues hidden within the unique edition of the beloved classic by Robert Louis Stevenson would be led to a proxy item which could be used to claim a treasure valued at over $10,000. On December 7th, 2022 it was announced on the MW Forum by Agnesdei (MW username) he found the treasure! David soon after sent out a newsletter confirming the discovery and an end to that particular hunt.
Not to despair though! Another hunt by David Jacobsen, The Hatter’s Hat remains unsolved. It too holds clues to a hidden treasure valued at over $10,000. Also, one of the Riddles in the The Mad Tea Party, as well as The Hatter’s Riddle in a recently released book, Best Riddles, need solved and their treasures claim.
Let’s learn more about these exciting developments in the following Six Questions! Enjoy!
Six Questions with David:
- 1Q) Congrats! on hosting a successful treasure hunt and encouraging many to either reread or read for the first time Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. Although it is a unique edition, it kept all its classic appeal. When was the first time you read Treasure Island, and what do you remember loving about the original story most?
Thank you, Jenny! It was a lot of fun.
I first discovered Treasure Island as a kid, but I didn’t read the book until later in life. Once I did read it, I instantly fell in love. I enjoyed the pirate lore, the plot, the setting, and the adventure of Jim Hawkins. And, of course, the treasure hunt aspect of it really appealed to me. There’s something about treasure quest stories that always captured my attention better than the rest. It’s not the finding of treasure, per se, that gets me, but the quest to find something unique and extraordinary that really draws me in.
- 2Q) Were you surprised when the proxy for the treasure was found, or had you been aware someone (or more) was closing in on the discovery?
I’ll admit I was a bit taken off guard when the treasure was found. I was expecting the Treasure Island hunt to take a bit longer than it ended up taking. But I was very excited and happy to know that it had been found. I had no idea anyone was even close.
- 3Q) Can you share a breakdown of the clues found in the book leading to the location of the treasure?
I may be releasing a detailed solve soon, perhaps via the Wonderland treasure facebook page or on the Wonderland treasure website, – I’m looking into the ramifications first – but for now I would be happy to share some critical details with your readers.
First of all, the treasure proxy was hidden and found in New Mexico, not far from Las Vegas. This is the first time I am sharing that key detail publicly BTW. Until now no one knew that but me and the finder. The proxy was located in a beautiful safe location just a couple hundred feet from a hiking trail.
In terms of the clues leading to the location, the most obvious way to find the treasure was to piece together the meaning of Billy Bones’ treasure “bearings” described by Jim Hawkins in detail in the chapter entitled “The Account-Book of Billy Bones,” which can be found in the Preview of Dead Man’s Chest (page 290).
Billy’s description of the treasure location starts thus:
“Having won the cache from the Spanish, we hid it in the canyon, where Flint Killed several Indians.”
Translation: You’re looking for a canyon to start your search. I hear there are some pretty good canyons to explore not far from Las Vegas, NM. (Hint, hint.)
The clues provided by Billy continue thus: “The spot is about fifteen miles N.E. of the mountain spring as the crow flies. S. of Brown [words unintelligible]. E. of the blaze.
So you’re looking for a canyon that’s about fifteen miles northeast of something that Billy might have referred to as “the mountain spring” south of Brown _____, east of something that Billy might have referred to as the blaze. (A rock or hill marked with white, for example.)
That should give your readers enough information to piece it all together, although it may take some digging and exploring on Google Maps to get the right spot.
I wanted Billy’s description to serve as a map of sorts that would lead you to a physical treasure Basically, if you could determine the landmarks that Billy was describing and referring to in the account book (page 290 of the book) Billy’s description would have led you straight to the chest, like a real pirate treasure map.
Of course, the U.S. is a pretty big place, and the landmarks are a bit vague, so you needed to do your homework to piece together exactly what landmarks Billy was describing.
To help with that, I provided some hints and clues in the book. “Mother,” for example, was an important clue. There were a number of places that word was encoded throughout the book. Even the treasure cache itself was called The Mother Lode. If you look at the chapter titles, some of the words are improperly capitalized. (Example – “How my Shore Adventure Begins” should have been “How My Shore Adventure Begins,” etc.) If you take the first letter of each word in the chapter titles with improper capitalization, it spells M-O-T-H-E-R. And there were other hints like that as well.
If you could have figured that clue out, you might have been able to piece figure out that the line “The chest is S.W. of where the [words unintelligible] meets you…” was actually “The chest is S.W. of where the Mother meets you.” And that would have helped a lot.
I also double encoded the solve to provide additional help and to confirm a precise location. (I won’t tell you exactly where or how I did that in case I want to reuse some of my tactics in future hunts.) But there was a way to determine the precise location using coordinates if you were clever enough to find it. The finder of the chest, from what I could tell, didn’t figure that piece out. And yet he was still able to find the chest, which points to the straightforward nature of the clues in Billy’s Account-book.
That doesn’t give you the complete solve, I’m afraid, but it hopefully gives your readers something to think about and to explore. Clever searchers may even be able to pinpoint the exact location give what I have just revealed. I may provide more details soon, as I said, on the Wonderland Treasure Hunt website. We’ll have to see.
- 4Q) What was your process for crafting the hunt for Treasure Island? For example, had you researched past treasure hunts? Were you familiar with the location? Etc. Plus, did the hunt go as you had imagined?
I wanted to have the treasure hunt fit well with the theme of the book. That’s why I used Billy Bone’s Account-book to be the source of most information. I wanted searchers to feel like Jim Hawkins in trying to find the location of a real-world treasure. That’s the sort of thing I would have loved as a child, so that’s the hunt I created for others.
I never researched other treasure hunts. I just started with the premise that I wanted to use Billy to give the map and the clues, then I used landmarks in the area around the location of the treasure to tell the story through Billy’s words, trying to be vague enough that people wouldn’t find the proxy in a day but also solvable enough that it wouldn’t take them a century.
- 5Q) The Hatter’s Hat, your other hunt based around a classic tale, which was released November 2020, remains unsolved. What do you feel is hindering its discovery? Have you checked on the proxy item? Is it still in the location you hid it?
I’m not sure what is hindering the Wonderland proxy’s discovery. I was expecting that treasure proxy to be found a long time ago, to tell the truth – certainly before the Treasure Island treasure proxy was found. But clearly I was wrong.
I have not checked on the proxy item in some time. I fear that going back to that precise location might tip some searchers off as there is a decent amount of traffic to that general place throughout the year. But I know for certain that the proxy is still in the same location. Don’t ask me how I know that.
People are definitely starting to get close to solving that hunt. When I published the map, it helped a lot of people narrow things down. Some people have been able to use the map and poem to figure out the general search area. Some people have been within about a hundred feet of the chest, but I don’t think they know who they are. Even the close searchers (at least the ones I know about) seem to be missing a very important clue. If they had figured it out, they most likely would have found the chest by now.
- 6Q) In a previous Six Questions you mentioned about writing sequels to Treasure Island: Treasure Hunt Edition. Are these still a possibility? What, if anything, do you have planned for future releases?
I’m considering it. I started writing the rest of Dead Man’s Chest about a year ago, and I got far enough along into the novel that the story is pretty much plotted out. But life has gotten in the way of me finishing it for now, I’m afraid, and duty has distracted me quite a bit from my desire to return to it. I’m trying to write it in the voice and style of Robert Louis Stevenson for authenticity but doing that takes some time and effort. One day it will be complete, I hope, but probably not this year.
In the meantime, I recently released a new treasure hunt – The Hatter’s Riddle. That is a riddle-based armchair treasure hunt. Simple premise: the first person to solve the master riddle gets the treasure. The riddle and the hints and clues are in Best Riddles for Kids, Teens, and Adults, available now on Amazon. There’s a dedicated page about that hunt on the Wonderland Treasure website with more details on how to get started for those who are interested. I wanted to create a hunt that could be solved at home for all the people who have trouble traveling and getting out into the wilderness. And I wanted to create a riddle-based hunt because I have always loved riddles. I hope your audience will enjoy it!