Armchair Treasure Hunts

Masquerade (1979):

Masquerade started a new genre, the armchair treasure hunt. Masquerade is on one level a simple but entertaining children’s book. On a deeper level Masquerade is an extremely complicated puzzle book, too complicated in fact. The goal of solving the puzzle was to determine the location of a jeweled golden rabbit buried somewhere in England. Hoards of people scoured the countryside digging up the landscape. In the end the prize was claimed by a person who kind of cheated. Later a legitimate winner was announced. Which has since been brought into question as well. The general consensus is that the clues do not reasonably lead to the goal.

 

Book Without A Name (1984):

Book Without a Name

The “Book Without a Title” is a puzzle book who’s point is to determine the actual title of the book. In the contest associated with the book the first person who sent in the correct title, expressed in a picture, won a jeweled honeycomb.

 

 

Treasure: In Search of the Golden Horse (1984):

Treasure: In Search of the Golden HorseThe goal of this treasure hunt book was to determine the location of a small solid gold horse. The puzzles are quite complicated. The solution was not found until the contest had ended so the golden horse was denoted to charity.

 

A Treasure’s Trove (2005):

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“ATreasure Trove” is a children’s fairy tale book on the surface, and a treasure hunt for adults underneath. The goal of A Treasure’s Trove is to find any of 14 jeweled animals hidden around the U.S. While the puzzles involved were challenging, all the jeweled animals were found.

 

The Clock Without A Face (2010):

CWAF-book-picture.jpgThe goal of this treasure hunt was to find any of 12 jeweled numbers hidden around the U.S. This book folded the search for the prizes into the plot of the book in such a way that blended fantasy with reality. The goal was to recover jeweled numbers stolen from a clock face by an unnamed thief. Finding the actual numbers led to revelation of the identity of the (fictional) thief. The numbers were recovered and the identity of the thief discovered.