The Hunt

 

A little digging is the task.

—Byron Preiss, The Secret 

When Byron wrote these words, he was not talking about dirt. A great deal of hard work by a large number of people has gone into creating the pool of knowledge currently available for these puzzles. The first treasure hunters identified a few details that are consistent among all twelve images, which they eventually posted on a website called Quest4Treasure.co.uk. The common details are as follows: All of the images have clearly visible birth flowers and birthstones for a particular month. Sometimes the number representing the month is displayed as the time of day, as in the San Francisco image (six o’clock for June), or as a number of items, as in the Houston image (seven pillars indicating July). Latitude and longitude are hidden in all of the images except Milwaukee, which was identified by other means. The poems appear to provide step by step instructions on how to find the treasure, but deciphering these instructions has proven to be elusive. 

The Chicago puzzle, “solved” in 1983 by a group of local young men, made abbreviated references to famous names: M and B referred to Mozart and Beethoven, L and R stood for Lincoln and Roosevelt. All of the references were vague and difficult to follow.

The next casque was found in Cleveland in 2004 by two New Jersey lawyers. This puzzle seemed to rely heavily on finding very specific name references and visual cues. The casque was found in a planter in the Grecian Gardens in Rockefeller Park.

The partial solution to the Boston puzzle, found in 2019 by a game designer, involved deducing a general location that met a number of specific criteria, a baseball field in Boston’s North End, near the water, and with steps nearby. The treasure was dug up near home plate by an excavator during a renovation of the field. 

Finally, there is a general consensus that Byron’s book, The Secret: A Treasure Hunt, hides a deeper mystery, a theory that has been the source of some wild speculation. This theory is called “the secret of The Secret.”