Masquerade

Because of the timing and many similarities, most believe that The Secret: A Treasure Hunt, published in 1982, was based on a 1979 picture book by Kit Williams titled Masquerade. If true, this gives us a window of three years in which Byron’s book was conceived of and created, a short period when the physical elements of the puzzles were observed by Byron.

Masquerade consisted of a fictional story along with sixteen illustrations with large lettering around the outside. The author stated that the book had in it all the information necessary to find a treasure buried in a park somewhere in France. By the time the treasure was found in 1982, Masquerade had sold over two hundred thousand copies.

To solve the puzzle, a line must be drawn in each painting from each creature's left eye through the longest digit on its left hand, and out to one of the letters in the page border. The same is done for the longest digit on the left foot. The two lines are then repeated for the right side. Any of these that are not fully visible are excluded. The letters indicated by the lines drawn in each painting form words that describe a park and the exact location of the treasure, a gold and jewel-encrusted rabbit encased in a clay box. The location of the treasure could be found by observing the shadow cast by the tip of a particular monument on the summer or winter equinox. Though complex, this puzzle is rather one-dimensional. Once you figure out the pattern, it becomes a matter of following the directions. The puzzle was solved and the treasure recovered three years after publication. This may explain why The Secret: A Treasure Hunt consists of twelve multi-step puzzles imbued with varying degrees of difficulty.

Though Byron’s book is similar to Masquerade there are many differences. The vast majority of The Secret is a spoof, a parody of a field guide to magical creatures written by a couple of National Lampoon editors, Sean Kelly and Ted Mann. The only portions of the book written by Byron are the introduction and the twelve poems. These portions along with the twelve paintings, by John Jude Palencar, comprise the treasure hunt. If you follow the clues and find the key within the casque, your reward is a gem, the one associated with that puzzle. The only rules are that the casques are buried no deeper than 2.5 feet and are not buried in a cemetery, any life-threatening location, a flower bed, or land owned by anyone associated with creating the hunt. Over the forty years since publication, only three of the twelve casques have been recovered, and the interpretations of the clues leading to these “solutions” leave us with more questions than answers.