ddp
New Member
Posts: 13
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Post by ddp on Jul 16, 2022 13:26:09 GMT -5
Did you have an expected solve order for the puzzles based on (expected) difficulty? Were there any puzzles you were surprised were solved much earlier/later than expected?
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ddp
New Member
Posts: 13
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Post by ddp on Jul 16, 2022 14:26:03 GMT -5
What is the significance of the letters PLBG on the tokens?
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Post by leftbrained on Jul 16, 2022 14:29:08 GMT -5
What is the significance of the letters PLBG on the tokens? I looked that up, and found you can buy Plumbing Tags from Walmart that look identical to these. That's my assumption. |
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Leveret
Full Member
An enchanting hare
Posts: 217
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Post by Leveret on Jul 16, 2022 15:00:59 GMT -5
What is the significance of the letters PLBG on the tokens? I looked that up, and found you can buy Plumbing Tags from Walmart that look identical to these. That's my assumption. Yep, that's it. Beth found some cheap, stampable tokens that had PLBG on them. We did try for a while at the start to see if we could come up with some story title that had the initials PLBG. "Prince Leveret's Big Gamble" etc. But nothing sounded natural enough in the end.  Bill (sorry I'm accidentally mixing the accounts I'm posting from) |
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Post by susb8383 on Jul 16, 2022 15:03:11 GMT -5
What was the reasoning behind releasing the tokens to everyone after 28 days? I've never heard of that type of thing being done before in a treasure hunt. We would love to know your opinions about this aspect of the hunt, and how you might have chosen to do things differently if you ran a similar hunt yourself. Well, I can only answer for myself but this was the one part of the hunt I wasn't crazy about. I think a team should have to solve something to get the information, not just wait a certain amount of time. I would have rather seen clues being released after 28 days so that other teams had hints on how to solve those puzzles, rather than having the tokens released without any solves needing to be made.
That's just me, I know.
But I agree with previous comments, this was a really fun hunt and I hope you convince Beth to do a sequel!
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ddp
New Member
Posts: 13
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Post by ddp on Jul 16, 2022 15:04:26 GMT -5
What is the significance of the letters PLBG on the tokens? I looked that up, and found you can buy Plumbing Tags from Walmart that look identical to these. That's my assumption. Oh! And here they are:
Here we were thinking it was something relevant like "Porcupine Leveret Beetle Geocoding" |
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Leveret
Full Member
An enchanting hare
Posts: 217
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Post by Leveret on Jul 16, 2022 15:14:08 GMT -5
Did you have an expected solve order for the puzzles based on (expected) difficulty? Were there any puzzles you were surprised were solved much earlier/later than expected? My main surprise and sorrow was that Ant was solved quickly from the text and art hints. The Ant puzzle was one of the more intricate puzzles that we were proud of. Bummer that it didn't need to be solved to find the token. One unlucky thing was that an unaffiliated hiker/blogger/photographer happened to post pictures of a hike at the very location where the Ant token was hidden, including one picture almost exactly matching the tree in the Ant artwork. This allowed solvers to verify the location before traveling to it. And I was a tad disappointed that other tokens were solved without solving the core puzzles (Golden Beetle, Queen Bee). But Beth's artwork gave a nice set of confirmers and the text hints were often obscure but not so obscure that motivated searchers couldn't figure some things out just from the text and artwork alone. We weren't sure if folks would figure out the Polybius keywords. Clues #3 and #4 seemed to crack that wide open, though we're not sure if everyone solved Message #8 in the clues or if some folks just happened to finally guess what the right keywords were. We'd love to hear from solvers how/when they figured that out. We'd also love to hear of any favorite moments or big "aha"s that folks had during their puzzle solving. I thought that some of the west/Ruby puzzles might need hinting and I was starting to think about how to release a hint for Crab and Red Beatle, errr, Beetle, but I was pleasantly surprised when a few folks stumbled upon the correct solutions after a month or two. Bill |
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Leveret
Full Member
An enchanting hare
Posts: 217
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Post by Leveret on Jul 16, 2022 15:20:44 GMT -5
I can only answer for myself but this was the one part of the hunt I wasn't crazy about. I think a team should have to solve something to get the information, not just wait a certain amount of time. I would have rather seen clues being released after 28 days so that other teams had hints on how to solve those puzzles, rather than having the tokens released without any solves needing to be made. Fair point. Our concern with going that route was: if we started releasing hints for solving tokens that had already been found, then all of the hints would also need to be of "equal fairness." If we released a big hint for Token #1 and a small hint for Token #2, then the finder of Token #1 would be understandably annoyed that we helped other solvers find "their" token more than we helped other solvers find another token. And "equal fairness" is in the eye of the beholder, and we were sure to have somebody be unhappy with the fairness of our released hints. Bill |
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jrrag
Junior Member
Posts: 51 
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Post by jrrag on Jul 16, 2022 16:14:30 GMT -5
I thought from the start that PLBG was going to reference some piece of literature, the token numbers were pages, and the rest of a book code was going to be on the back of the tokens. If you made me suggest one improvement, it would be that tokens had a little more geographical diversity. If you lived in the north east, you had a huge advantage for BOTG. You northerners are confused about what south means . |
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Post by wgardner on Jul 16, 2022 17:07:03 GMT -5
If you made me suggest one improvement, it would be that tokens had a little more geographical diversity. If you lived in the north east, you had a huge advantage for BOTG. You northerners are confused about what south means . This was also a topic of debate and dispute between the two authors. I too wanted more evenly spread tokens across the country, and believed that my Virginia hometown should best be classified as "east" when looking at a map of the US, whereas Beth was vehement that Virginia was "the south." My opinion is that her classifications were Civil War era classifications, though of course her opinion differs. I also thought that the "north" tokens were really "far northeast" tokens and that "north" tokens should be spread more in the Michigan/ Wisconsin/ Dakotas/ Montana region. But it certainly was easier to hide tokens in 4 tight northeastern states compared to 4 widely spread, more lightly populated true northern states. And it was easier for solvers to either find the "north" tokens or find friends to find the "north" tokens given the densely populated states in that region. Maybe the next hunt should use only states that did not have tokens hidden in them this time. Debugging Ferrets, take note! |
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Post by GeneticBlend on Jul 16, 2022 17:10:50 GMT -5
I am traveling today, so I haven't been able to pitch in and answer the "Ask Me Anything" questions. But I have a few minutes now, so I will try to answer a couple of questions.
The PLGB tokens were purchased by me as an inexpensive way to be able to hide a proxy item that could withstand bad weather conditions. The letters and numbers would satisfy the need for a searcher to identify the proxy.
As the hunt evolved, Bill and I decided to add additional messages to the backs of tokens. It was easier, and much less costly, to just hammer in the messages by hand.
I originally tried to make the title fit the PLGB, but it was just too forced.
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As for the geography, it was my idea to try to follow the guidelines set by "The Great US Treasure Hunt". The authors of that hunt used the Mississippi River to divide East and West, and the 40th Parallel to divide North from South.
I know this wasn't perfect. But no matter what division we would have decided on, there would be some people who would not be happy with it. But it was a fictional story, so did it really matter?
However, in the real world, we are two people, trying to make a quality treasure hunt, funded with our own money. We had to travel to hide the tokens, and we both live in the East. So, unfortunately, the majority of tokens ended up on our end of the US.
I too wish we could have spread out the tokens more. But when we get sponsors, or if people want to start paying $100 for a book, I know I can't afford to do travel all over the US. 😉
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Post by jigsaw on Jul 16, 2022 17:37:02 GMT -5
This is by far the most fun and best experience I’ve ever had on a hunt! I would pay more the next time since you two have proven to be such masters of challenging all parts of our brains, hearts, and desire for botg adventures. Please consider a sequel. 🙏🏻
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Post by GeneticBlend on Jul 16, 2022 18:12:54 GMT -5
I want the chance to be the one to go BOTG now. I like solving hunts too! I am taking a break from being a hunt creator.
😎 Watch out! You might have some competition on the next hunt you take on.
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Post by stercox on Jul 16, 2022 18:25:25 GMT -5
On behalf of The BugCatchers, first we would really like to thank Beth and Bill for such an epic adventure. We tried to squeeze every drop of fun out of this hunt (still are) and will go away with memories that will last a lifetime. We would also like to thank and congratulate all the other hunters, Team Palmford and especially the Debugging Ferrets, you killed it! You made this hunt intensely paced, challenging and exhilarating for us. I for one was thankful that all of the tokens were hidden on this side of the country. We really stacked up the miles on this one. Our favorite puzzles were ANT and the MAP, just amazing innovative puzzlecrafting! One of my favorite days was watching one of my teammates, who is new to treasure hunting, go and retrieve the red beetle (we used FB chat at all the BOTG sites so we could experience it together). Our team really had to overcome some good puzzle challenges to get to that moment and when she found it, she was just beaming. I'll never forget that. Another teammate who hates ciphers and never works on them, embraced the learning curve and was helping to decode the master spiral at the end. So good to see. The veterans in our group had to do some serious problem solving that really challenged us. We back doored the master grid/alphabet using Verdee. We back doored Lazuli's key. This created problems in moving forward that we had to find our work arounds. This hunt was definitely an education for us too! This hunt was masterful and a very special gift to our community and I hope the community understands what just happened. You just don't see this kind of hunt. I've never seen this kind of hunt. Thanks and kudos to Beth and Bill!!!
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Post by thedawailey on Jul 16, 2022 19:35:56 GMT -5
I have to say this was a great hunt! I am not much of a complicated cipher person, so I appreciated that there so many levels to the hunt. Things to discover and solve in the artwork, the text, the codes and ciphers. The artwork was beautiful and the story captivating. The fact that each level could be solved in more than one way was also a plus - if you weren't a cipher person, you could use your skills at research and finding clues in the images and text. If ciphers were your thing, you could deep dive into those to solve it that way. I can't wait to see the solution PDF to help me understand everything I missed.
I do have one question for the authors -
I'm curious as to why you sent us outside the book to use a Beatles album and songs unrelated to the story for a solution, and did not use the long list of Beatles songs included IN the book?
But thank you Beth and Bill for an amazing ride! This is one book I will keep and revisit for a long time!
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