In a matter of days, we'll all be once again scouring parks at 3am in search of the ever-elusive medallion. Only a handful of groups, somewhere around 60, have the honor of laying claim to the title of "Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt Finder". However, for the 2013 hunt, that's all about to change. No longer will the honor go to a group of hunters; the official rules state that there will be one and only one winner. In order to collect the full prize, the single finder must have his or her own registered button. If you find it and don't have a button, you've either got to forego the full prize, or put an awful lot of faith in someone who does.

This leads us to the first tip for the 2013 hunt. Buy a button. Register it in your name by the appropriate deadline. If you expect to be hunting with your kids, it won't hurt to have one registered in their names too, just in case. Even though the rules for minors have been in place for years, its a little unclear as to how it will be handled if the puck is found by someone under eighteen.

Does this rule change mean you should go solo this year? Absolutely not! Out of the thousands of people who search for the medallion, only one will find it. The odds of being that one are stil pretty slim. I've said it before the greatest treasure mostof us will ever find is the camaraderie and the friendships that are created through this crazy hobby.

Tip number 2: Know the parks. During the summer of 2012, Coolerheads were responsible for finding six medallions associated with suburban treasure hunts: Little Canada, New Brighton, Woodbury, Hugo, Cottage Grove, and White Bear Lake. Yes, none of these are in Saint Paul, but what did we learn from the 2012 hunt? Saint Paul is not the only domain for these hunts. Half of those cities are within Ramsey County. We were also very active searching for medallions in Roseville, Vadnais Heights, Columbia Heights, Rosemount, and Hastings, and yes only a couple of those cities aren't "offlimits" for the Pioneer Press. Still the point is this: knowledge is power.

By spending time hunting in these parks you get a feel for the lay of the land. It takes time and gas to spend as much time as we did hunting this year, so we understand if you don't want to participate in those hunts. However, in the off-season, take some time to familiarize yourself with parks that you may not normally consider. Be observant. Look around for cues that a clue writer might take, because one year, that cue might be your key to finding the medallion. And hey if you get the chance, participate in some of those hunts. They're a lot more low-key than the Pioneer Press hunt.

Tip number 3: The perpetual tip. Get out and dig. I repeat, get out and dig. You're not going to find it in your car driving around, or on your computer. Yes, the Cooler Crew site is a treasure-trove of treasure-hunting information, with information on 108 different treasure hunts at the time, plus 1166 different clues. But it can only get you so far. Besides your shot at glory, you'll meet new hunters. One of the trends of the past few years is that people don't share their noodles nearly as much on the board as they used to, preferring to noodle in person. Everyone has their reasons but a lot of it is that they just aren't sitting at the computer; they're out in the parks.

In the meantime, explore around coolercrew.com. I try to add new functionality all the time as I'm able to, and one of the new things this year is the ability for you to go in and rate clues on a scale of 1 to 5 stars. I did this before for the 2006-2011 hunts, and only I could do it. Now, anyone with an account on this site can do it and the results will be averaged together in real-time. Observant viewers will note that the URLs have changed for the various treasure hunts. As of right now, treasure hunts have become first-class citizens of the content management system here. Every piece of data regarding a hunt is now part of the system as opposed to external information. This doesn't necessarily mean much for you, the user, but for the webmaster, it eliminates a massive maintenance nightmare. Right now, the only pieces of information not contained within the system are related to city and county boundaries as used in the map of hiding places, and some park information which really isn't used at the moment.

This leaves the discussion board archives as the last bastion of content not contained within the core of the Cooler Crew management system. That all will come in time, hopefully before next year's hunt. In time, that will set the stage for a forum directly on coolercrew.com if we desire it!

Good luck finding the medallion, and have fun out there!

Its about that time of year when I start going through and tidying up things in preparation for the coming hunt. In doing so, I'm going through the archives to an extent and doing some old reading. We've had some great one-liners before and I'm gonna post them here:

• Eags, 2002 Boards, post 565: Never thought about it in terms of the medallion getting laid before...
• TMK, 2002 Boards, post 1042: New for the 2002 Medallion Hunt, straight from Cooler Crew Incorporated, comes the Christmas/Medallion Hunt CD for all diggers! Included on this stellar cd are songs such as "The Twelve Days of Hunting", "Scribe in Bells", "Away From a Playground", "Check the Mall", "Do You Dig What I Dig", "God Rest Ye Weary Coolerheads", "We Came Upon a Midnight Clue", "Joy to the Finder", "O Dig All Trees", "Tim the Red-Nosed Hunter", "Trent and Jackie Are Coming To Town", "Sleepless Night", and the all-time favorite, "Allison Wonderland" Hurry now, while supplies last!

With the annual arrival of the Winter Carnival buttons, we get our first glimpse of the rules for the Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt. Last year, we got a new twist on the clues. One hour prior to the official release time online, the clues were released in a scrambled form. Not that we really needed the unscrambled clue, given our penchant to attach meaning to every single word in every single clue, regardless of how meaningless it may be. This year, in what we can only presume is a response to last year's controversy, where a group of hunters teamed up after someone found the medallion, because the finder didn't have a registered button, and that group was later stripped of their titles, there's an interesting twist on the rules this year. As opposed to past years, where multiple winners (in the event of a group find) are recognized by the Pioneer Press, the Pioneer Press will recognize only one finder, and that one finder must have a properly registered Winter Carnival button. So, fellow Coolerheads, your buttons, whether you like it are not, are no longer for sale. If you want your share of the $5000 bonus for having a registered button, you better be on the lookout for our beloved piece of transparent lucite, because you won't get the 5 grand without it :).

While there's been some criticism of the rule on the Treasure Hunt Facebook Page, mostly about the implementation of the rule, and how tax consequences will be handled (since the burden will be on a sole finder, instead of distributed across the group), the reaction has been generally positive, just because it avoids the sort of ad hoc group forming solely for the purpose of enhancing the prize. What do you think?

Thanks to Diggorious Rex, we have a new game in town: the Cooler Crew Picture Tag.

The gist of the game is that someone posts a picture of a somewhat-well-known, but identifiable location, with something that identifies that they were there (usually something like their car). Occasionally the poster will give clues as to where the picture was taken. The goal of everyone else is to find the spot, take the same picture (with your own car), and post it. The first one who claims the spot, has 24 hours to post the next picture to find.

Join us on the Facebook group for playing tag.

Not likely, but the Crew is now up to 5 finds in 2012. In addition to Barefootguy and Diggorius Rex''s Hugo find, and Cluey and me2''s White Bear Lake and Cottage Grove finds, Cluey and me2 are also the happy finders of the Little Canada and New Brighton medallions as well. Total winnings for the group: something on the order of $2125. Not bad, crew. Not bad.

The Cooler Crew has found the treasure medallions in 3 of thes festival hunts in 2012. Barefootguy and Diggorious Rex found the Hugo Good Neighbor Days Spike on June 10 near Clearwater Creek, while Me2 (and she insists Clue Master, but everyone else knows otherwise, something about keeping score on total finds) found the Cottage Grove Strawberry Fest Medallion in Hamlet Park on June 16. Cluey followed that up 5 days later on the 21st by snatching up the White Bear Lake Manitou Days medallion just north of the historic depot.

Come on Crew, let's keep up the good work and pick up a majority of these suckers this summer!

At approximately 2am, Lange Wallgren, of Osseo, found the 2012 Pioneer Press medallion in Tony Schmidt Park in Arden Hills. Lange will split the prize money with four other co-finders, Nate Buck of Cottage Grove and Corey Hargreaves of New Brighton,as well as Coolerheads Alex Valen of North Oaks and past finder Jake Ingebrigtson of St. Paul. The five had a gentlemen's agreement set up before the find to split the prize if they found it. It took the group 11 clues and hours of digging in Tony Schmidt to find the medallion and bring home $10,000.

Details of the hunt can be found here.

As always a rehash bash is in the works. Come back to the front page of coolercrew.com when they're available.

WCCO interviewed a bunch of Coolerheads at the ABB on January 18. The stories will be featured on the January 20 morning news show, once in the 5am hour and once in the 6am hour, and possibly on Saturday morning. A separate story on Rob and Jake is planned for January 23, while one about Clue Master and his "tools" is planned for later in the week if the hunt goes that far. We'll be updating this story with the video links as they are posted.

• Friendships, Love Found At Medallion Hunting Group
• 2 Guys, 38 Years, 2 Medallions

This year there are some interesting new twists on the Treasure Hunt.

For starters, the Pioneer Press is giving away the medallion used in the past 5 treasure hunts as a contest prize. We all have a chance to own a real piece of treasure hunt history.

Second, we all know about the move to Gabe's for the official release of the nightly newspaper. The newspaper will be released at 11:30 each night at Gabe's by the Park at Lexington and Energy Park Drive near Como Park. The clues will be available online at 11:30pm, with a special "scrambled" version available online one hour earlier each night.

Finally, 1000 miniature medallions will be hidden in Parks in Ramsey County. each of these medallions is good for free admission to the "Real Pirates" exhibit at the Science Museum, which opens on February 18.

Details can be found at the Pioneer Press.

From the "Didn't See That One Coming" Deparment, we just learned that Mr. Goodhue has decided that instead of releasing the clues at the Pioneer Press building, they will be released at Gabe's By The Park this year. It was announced on an update to a recycled story/video from the 2010 hunt. We don't know yet what this will mean for nightly pre- and post-clue gatherings or whether this is going to be a permanent change or just temporary as the Central Corridor construction is in progress. We'll see and keep you posted here.