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Post by jtwelks1992 on Feb 1, 2021 20:40:43 GMT -5
The guys who made this had a great idea in theory. Treasure hunts like these are really popular now adays, but making the solutions random and unsolvable except by luck is killing it. It should be *hard* to solve don't get me wrong, but it's unsolvable until they release a clue and then it's just whoever gets there first.
Jeez just being from a marketing background this first release would have gotten the word out there for the 2nd release to sell probably 200k copies.
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Post by whispa on Feb 1, 2021 21:16:12 GMT -5
I didn't realize the solves would rely on clues given at certain times/very obviously timed time frames otherwise I likely wouldn't have bought the book. If someone solves the chapters without aid of the clues, then I stand corrected and just needed to work harder. I think there are different hunts for different people and this one just isn't my cup of tea.
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Post by susb8383 on Feb 2, 2021 6:42:51 GMT -5
We’ll have to see the final solutions from the next two chapters. I’m not convinced it is random. In hindsight chapter 4 seemed obvious and I’m surprised it wasn’t solved without a hint. And as I mentioned in another thread, the title of chapter 2 needs commas to be grammatically correct which could have been an indication. Maybe when the hunt is totally finished, Dave will elaborate as to how we could have figured out the methods without hints.
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Post by cvsnipe05 on Feb 2, 2021 9:39:57 GMT -5
Agreed. Just from following posts on the Hunt Facebook Group (not the official FB Group) it seems like it wasn't ever intended to be a hunt where clues were give within the text because they didn't want someone to be able to enter something on the computer and solve it quickly but they also didn't want a hunt that lasted for years on end. IMO there are far better ways to do that than make it a trial and error guessing game but as David has said himself, it's a 10k guessing game where you are given clues sometimes and that should be okay.
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Post by jtwelks1992 on Feb 2, 2021 10:38:31 GMT -5
We’ll have to see the final solutions from the next two chapters. I’m not convinced it is random. In hindsight chapter 4 seemed obvious and I’m surprised it wasn’t solved without a hint. And as I mentioned in another thread, the title of chapter 2 needs commas to be grammatically correct which could have been an indication. Maybe when the hunt is totally finished, Dave will elaborate as to how we could have figured out the methods without hints. That's not totally correct for the chapter 2 notion. In normal writing yes, but grammatically for titles no |
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Post by scottk on Feb 2, 2021 16:12:10 GMT -5
I think the problem (or at least the cause) is that the business side of things is taking precedence over the treasure hunt. The investors don't want to wait years (or even months?) for their ROI. Understandable. So they created a system for controlling the timing that, while clever, kinda takes the fun out of the hunt for a lot of people.
Seems they're shooting for, very roughly, one solution per month-ish, so that they can meet their summer deadline to release part two. Hence why any given chapter is hard to solve for 30 days, and then gets solved within a couple days of the clue being released.
Effective way to control the time-frame, but from a searcher standpoint, I can't help but feel like I'm being rushed to solve an unsolvable code before the dead-giveaway clue is released at which point it becomes a mad-dash, every man for himself event, and victory boils down largely to luck, timing, and thinking under pressure. I don' think it's a coincidence that it feels kind of escape room-esque. Being on the clock, and being fed hints so as to wrap up the puzzle quickly, etc.. That was probably Dave's MO when he ran escape rooms. But I think most treasure hunters are more about the slow burn. I sure am.
All that said, I'm with susb8383. Chapter four seems very solvable (granted, in hindsight) given that they literally provided an itemized list of phrases to inspect. I think if searchers had been given two or three months instead of one, it would have been solved before the clue was released. I'm hoping there are similar telling nudges in other chapters.
After the chapter 4 debacle, I get the impression a lot of people have given up on trying to solve the chapters until the clue comes out. That's a potential golden window of opportunity for those still in the game (if the remaining solutions are more chapter 4-ish and less chapter 2-ish anyway.)
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Post by whispa on Feb 2, 2021 17:03:06 GMT -5
Effective way to control the time-frame, but from a searcher standpoint, I can't help but feel like I'm being rushed to solve an unsolvable code before the dead-giveaway clue is released at which point it becomes a mad-dash, every man for himself event, and victory boils down largely to luck, timing, and thinking under pressure. I don' think it's a coincidence that it feels kind of escape room-esque. Being on the clock, and being fed hints so as to wrap up the puzzle quickly, etc.. That was probably Dave's MO when he ran escape rooms. But I think most treasure hunters are more about the slow burn. I sure am. ^ Yup the escape room comparison makes lots of sense here. I'm also one of the slow burn kinda hunters. The way I see it is why put so much time in prior to the clues coming out if it's all more than likely going to result in the mad dash anyway. I'm genuinely hoping we have someone who solves before the clues come. Rooting for you all from the sidelines! |
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Post by susb8383 on Feb 2, 2021 20:29:14 GMT -5
We’ll have to see the final solutions from the next two chapters. I’m not convinced it is random. In hindsight chapter 4 seemed obvious and I’m surprised it wasn’t solved without a hint. And as I mentioned in another thread, the title of chapter 2 needs commas to be grammatically correct which could have been an indication. Maybe when the hunt is totally finished, Dave will elaborate as to how we could have figured out the methods without hints. That's not totally correct for the chapter 2 notion. In normal writing yes, but grammatically for titles no If that's the case, then the title for Chapter 1 should have been "Ladies and Gentlemen it's a Treasure Hunt" with no comma. The title for Chapter 3 also has a comma in an appropriate place. |
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davem
Full Member
Posts: 190
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Post by davem on Feb 2, 2021 21:28:53 GMT -5
The guys who made this had a great idea in theory. Treasure hunts like these are really popular now adays, but making the solutions random and unsolvable except by luck is killing it. It should be *hard* to solve don't get me wrong, but it's unsolvable until they release a clue and then it's just whoever gets there first. Jeez just being from a marketing background this first release would have gotten the word out there for the 2nd release to sell probably 200k copies. I've ranted on this before and I'll repeat -- Based on what we saw with Chapter Two, I'd tend to agree with all of this. However, in my humble opinion and based on decades of trying/some success/mostly failing/& seeing the solutions, I think Chapter Four was solvable without the Clue(s). So that gives me hope. Hope that there just might be a bigger picture. Or, according to ratios, at least one of the remaining two chapters is solvable without the dreaded last minute Clue->Rush->Slam method. And yes... as I also said before... the quickest thing to shut down sales on a ATH is that it wasn't solvable without a clue. |
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stones
New Member
Arm Chair Treasure Hunter
Posts: 44 
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Post by stones on Feb 2, 2021 23:34:10 GMT -5
The guys who made this had a great idea in theory. Treasure hunts like these are really popular now adays, but making the solutions random and unsolvable except by luck is killing it. It should be *hard* to solve don't get me wrong, but it's unsolvable until they release a clue and then it's just whoever gets there first. Jeez just being from a marketing background this first release would have gotten the word out there for the 2nd release to sell probably 200k copies. I've ranted on this before and I'll repeat -- Based on what we saw with Chapter Two, I'd tend to agree with all of this. However, in my humble opinion and based on decades of trying/some success/mostly failing/& seeing the solutions, I think Chapter Four was solvable without the Clue(s). So that gives me hope. Hope that there just might be a bigger picture. Or, according to ratios, at least one of the remaining two chapters is solvable without the dreaded last minute Clue->Rush->Slam method. And yes... as I also said before... the quickest thing to shut down sales on a ATH is that it wasn't solvable without a clue. I don't consider this a true arm chair treasure hunt. It's more like a puzzle book with a big prize for solving the puzzle. 🤷 Just my opinion. I enjoy it either way and have been working tirelessly to solve! |
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Post by pumalion on Feb 3, 2021 11:49:54 GMT -5
I suspect there are clues built into the book and we haven't found them. People have stopped looking at chapters 2 and 4 because those hunts have been solved and the prizes claimed. But there may be clues we missed that would help to decode chapter 1 and 3. If we went back to examine 2 and 4, we might find that the authors expected we would find clues that have remained unidentified.
For instance, it seems pretty clear that "One hit, bam" is a reference to the One-Hit Wonders solution for chapter 4. How would we have known this title applied to chapter 4? There may be a hidden clue that makes the connection between the Chap. 3 title and the Chap. 4 solution.
In one of his podcast interviews, Dave Steele corrected an earlier assertion that there are no anagrams in the book. He clarified that there could be anagrams but they will not result directly in the solution of a location / hidden item. This leads me to think that one or more of the hidden clues could be anagrams: they will tell you something about the method to decode the chapter but will not tell you the solution itself.
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Post by dave76 on Feb 3, 2021 15:33:11 GMT -5
Regarding the chapter 2 title being a hint, I would counter that pretty much no one in practice adds the commas to "winner winner chicken dinner" and it is arguable that it is even grammatically correct to do so as you are making assumptions about the intention of a slang phrase. Seems to me "Winner! Winner! Chicken dinner!" is a more appropriate way if you really insisted, but my point is that it isn't much of a hint to remove commas from a phrase that no one adds commas to in the first place. Even Dictionary.com leaves it unpunctuated: www.dictionary.com/e/slang/winner-winner-chicken-dinner/ Also, there was this unfortunate exchange months ago when people kept asking about what seemed to be errors in the book, which I imagine led many to not consider the comma irregularities in chapter 2 to be part of the solution: "Any inaccuracies in grammar or spelling will not affect a decoded message." "Does this include Punctuation and Capitalization anomalies too?" "Yes." I think it's clear that these guys are new to planning out treasure hunts and they've made some missteps in terms of misleading info they've given out, but I think they are learning, hopefully meaning they are pretty well polished by the time the next book comes out. I do hope the solutions get more clever with time and that the ones we've seen so far are just oriented towards PR and getting a broader crowd interested. |
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Post by susb8383 on Feb 4, 2021 6:48:48 GMT -5
I never knew Winner Winner Chicken Dinner was an actual known phrase! I thought it was something the author made up. Never heard that before. People made a lot if incorrect assumptions based on that punctuation statement. They took it to mean that punctuation won’t be used, but to me it said to use punctuation exactly as it appears in the book, the same way Dave said if the book said someone was a one-hit wonder, then they’re a one-hit wonder for the purpose of this hunt even if they aren’t in real life. So maybe their punctuation disclaimer was a hint in itself. |
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Post by thedawailey on Feb 4, 2021 8:37:37 GMT -5
I never knew Winner Winner Chicken Dinner was an actual known phrase! I thought it was something the author made up. Never heard that before. People made a lot if incorrect assumptions based on that punctuation statement. They took it to mean that punctuation won’t be used, but to me it said to use punctuation exactly as it appears in the book, the same way Dave said if the book said someone was a one-hit wonder, then they’re a one-hit wonder for the purpose of this hunt even if they aren’t in real life. So maybe their punctuation disclaimer was a hint in itself. I agree. The mistakes and inaccuracies do not affect the solution, but it doesn't mean they aren't used for a solution. This would include punctuation, spelling, oddly capitalized words, the wrongly-identified one hit wonders and the unusual kangaroo word definition. We are supposed to assume everything in the book is correct in the world of the Benefactor and the 6 treasure-hunters, but even their hunt is not a treasure hunt. It's just a road trip with each leg ending in a $10,000 trivia question.
What makes it so confusing is trying to sort out which things are there for a reason and which are just filler. Chapter two was solved using commas in just the first few pages and the rest of the chapter meant absolutely nothing - to chapter two anyway.Pumalion may be on to something that there are hints in one chapter to another. One Hit, Bam! does seem to be a hint to chapter four.
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Post by cvsnipe05 on Feb 4, 2021 10:02:34 GMT -5
I suspect there are clues built into the book and we haven't found them. People have stopped looking at chapters 2 and 4 because those hunts have been solved and the prizes claimed. But there may be clues we missed that would help to decode chapter 1 and 3. If we went back to examine 2 and 4, we might find that the authors expected we would find clues that have remained unidentified. For instance, it seems pretty clear that "One hit, bam" is a reference to the One-Hit Wonders solution for chapter 4. How would we have known this title applied to chapter 4? There may be a hidden clue that makes the connection between the Chap. 3 title and the Chap. 4 solution. In one of his podcast interviews, Dave Steele corrected an earlier assertion that there are no anagrams in the book. He clarified that there could be anagrams but they will not result directly in the solution of a location / hidden item. This leads me to think that one or more of the hidden clues could be anagrams: they will tell you something about the method to decode the chapter but will not tell you the solution itself. I’m not sure there are clues in other chapters based off this post but who knows? Doesn’t hurt to try to look for them.  After a few different posts I’ve seen, I don’t hold these comments to be 100% true/accurate because the amount of clarifications that have been given/needed for TGUSTH are numerous. I think the only thing we can depend on being as close to the truth/accurate as possible are the chapter solutions. I don’t prefer this type of hunt but it could be a lot worse. |
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