The Hunt for the Lost Treasure of John Harvard
Introduction
Ahoy, matey! If ye be lookin' fer adventure and a chance at riches beyond
measure, ye be in the right place. This is a hunt for the Lost Treasure of
John Harvard, the greatest and most secret pile o' booty in all the seven
seas hidden by the most pernicious pirate ever to found a university.
Rumor has it that when he settled down from his life of adventure and
crime to pursue academics, John "No-Beard" Harvard hid all his loot
somewhere on the Harvard campus. The only clues he left behind to indicate
the treasure's whereabouts were a cryptic treasure map and eight entries
from his journal, each of which looked suspiciously like a puzzle. Any
band of puzzlers clever enough to find and decipher the journal entries
would surely discover wealth beyond their wildest dreams...
The journal entries themselves have been hidden around the Harvard campus,
but you should be able to find them with the aid of the map. There are
eight mini-puzzles on the map, each of which leads to one of the journal
entries. (The map is color-coded: things that are yellow on the map should
lead you to one entry, while things that are orange should lead you to a
second entry, and so on.)
Journal Entries
After you find each journal entry, you'll need to decipher it. Each entry
is a puzzle with an answer that's a single word or a short phrase.
(EYEPATCH or LONG JOHN SILVER might be answers to puzzles, but TODAY FOR
BREAKFAST I ATE MY FIRST MATE AND HE WAS TASTY would not be.) Whenever you
find a journal entry, Request a Call from the map webpage
to inform Hunt HQ of your discovery. We'll put a copy of that entry on
your team's website. Whenever you think that you have found the answer
to a puzzle, Request a Call from the webpage of that puzzle. We'll
tell you whether or not your answer is correct.
Meta-Puzzle
You will eventually use the eight answers to the journal entry puzzles,
along with the map, to
solve a Meta-puzzle. All that means is that you'll use those eight answers
in some way to discover what to do to reach the final stage of the hunt.
(Traditionally, many puzzle hunts end in a Runaround, a fast-paced, hectic
search for the final goal-- in this case, John Harvard's treasure.) You
might not need all of the answers to the journal entry puzzles to solve
the Meta-puzzle, but the more puzzles you solve, the easier it will be.
If you're puzzled about the puzzles, here's our standard advice for solvers.
So raise the skull and crossbones,
ready the plank,
and start solving! Arrrr!
A Line Is...
Alan and Edward are Friends
Dividing the Spoils
Immigrants
Lost in Paraphrase
Mixed Messages
There and Back Again
TLP
Treasure Map (meta)