Allison Wonderland's blog

by Allison Wonderland

Some of you may be interested to know some of what happened behind the scenes of this hunt. It all started of course when the PP medallion was found and people were calling for a second hunt. I didn't believe the PP would do another one and some Cooler Crew people were suggesting an immediate mock hunt. I'm usually up for such a challenge so I was thinking about it, waiting to hear for sure what the PP would.

When they said they wouldn't, Jake called me and said we should do one. It was his idea to do two clues a day. I had a meeting that night I had to go to so we said we would meet up later to discuss where to put it. In the meantime Jake decided not to help, but later realized he had an idea of what I had in mind, so he didn't hunt either. So as I headed to my meeting, I knew I was on my own.

After the meeting, I actually started towards Indian Mounds with the medallion in hand. I'm not even sure why now, but as I was driving I suddenly decided to go to Highland instead. As someone on here guessed, I was looking for a park that people had already been digging in. Not to hide footprints, but because of how I wanted to hide the medallion. I wanted to find a spot someone had already cleared, and hide it under their pile of snow so that when people came looking at Highland, they would think that spot had already been checked.

I got to the park and went to the south side because parking was easier. I went up to the picnic grounds and found a pile of snow next to an area someone had swept clean. I stuck my shovel under the pile, lifted it up, and put the medallion underneath. Then I pressed down on the snow with my shovel and scraped a bit more onto the pile. With that I was out of there.

By the time I got home it was after 10pm. I started making a list of things I could use as clues. I knew I had to get at least the first clue written before bed so that I could post it in the morning and I did manage to do that while also keeping up with the details of the PP hunt.

So the next morning I post the first clue thinking I had been pretty clever and used some obscure references. Five minutes later the first response appeared. It was Valley Girl saying it must be in Highland because Highland used to be called Reserve Township. My hunt lasted 5 minutes and they had already figured out the park!

So there was a bit of panic there as I furiously set about trying to write the rest of the clues. I knew I wasn't going to fool anyone into thinking it was a different park, but there was one tactic that might work. The "Boomerang". Often I like to use the "Eclipse" strategy which is where you use a small park, but you write clues in such a way that they also kind of fit a big park and the little park hides behind the big park. This would be the inverse of that. I would use a big park, but make people think the big park was a decoy for a little park, when in fact the little park was the decoy.

Mattocks Park was my target. I knew it had a Charles Schultz connection as did Highland, it was sort of in the Highland area, and they both had a street named after a college. My goal was to try and lure some people there through the 1st six clues anyway and then maybe the hunt would have a decent chance. The second clue was meant to talk about the Peanuts connection, but also to sow some doubt about whether it was really at Highland, or was it just the decoy yet again.

That strategy kind of worked, except somehow people ended up at Hillcrest instead of Mattocks. They would have to tell you why. I've never been to Hillcrest.

That first day was a furious one of clue writing. I actually had all 12 clues written within 24 hours of the PP hunt being done. I did tweak the wording on some of the unreleased clues later on, but didn't make any major changes or alter the order of them.

And then it was just a matter of waiting to see how long it would go. It was interesting to watch this year because there was a lot more discussion on the PP boards than I usually get to see during a hunt. People came up with Highland in half a dozen different ways from the first clue, and only two were intentional. I think I see now why the PP doesn't use Highland. Everyone tends to go there and dig no matter what the clue actually says.

On the other hand, even though the Reserve Township and District 15 thing came up very early on, people started going to parks all over town anyway. It's amazing what power a vague phrase can have on splitting the masses.

But eventually people got back to Highland right about on schedule and the hunt almost made it to Clue 10 which I think is a pretty good length. So despite a crazy start, I think it was a good hunt and I am pretty happy with it.

The Medallion Hunt of 2002 is now but a memory as we stand here on the doorstep of the 2003 hunt. For a few it may be a pleasant memory, but for most, even today, almost a year later, there's still a bitterness lingering on the edge of what should otherwise have been a pleasant recollection. Of course every hunt ends with a certain disappointment for everyone but the lucky finder, but in 2002 it seemed something else was lost as well.

The hunt started out as most do, with the annual gathering at Patrick McGovern's in what has been dubbed the "Pre-Dig Gig". I remember just a couple of years ago we were feeling pretty proud to have had 40 people pass through at one time or another. This time around we had a whole room of the upper bar packed with probably at least 100 people. Certainly enthusiasm was running high.

And why shouldn't it have been? The prize was still running at $10,000. There was snow on the ground. Old faces had returned and new ones were joining them as the ranks of the Cooler Crew continued to swell. Everything was looking good.

At midnight the first clue came out. As usual it didn't tell us a whole lot, although it's rather clunky writing ("Let the medallion search in you light a spark") did hint that we were dealing with a new writer from the previous years. Well, all we could hope for was that what they lacked in poetry skills they would make up for in puzzle-writing skills.

Of course not much can be done with just one clue so we waited for the next day. The second clue alluded to a park with hills. Of course it was only natural at this point in the hunt that a whole host of other meanings would be attributed to it's mere four lines. But when it's still that early in the hunt and there isn't a lot to think about just yet, turning brainstorms into hurricanes is fairly expected.

By Clue 3 however, things were starting to happen. The weather was turning warmer and the modest snowcover we had was starting to disappear. I'm not one who often went downtown for the clues, but for some reason I did this night and I was actually pretty surprised at the size of the crowd that was there for just the third clue. It was then that I first got the feeling that this hunt was going to be operating on an accelerated schedule.

When the clue came out it referred to a hill again, and sliding down the hill away from the woods. It wasn't a lot to go on, but it was starting to narrow things down for people and some people were starting to go out and check for the hilly parks.

When Clue 4 came out, it referred to something "in and on the air" as well as making reference to what sounded like some sort of sport, maybe baseball. Most people picked up pretty quickly that it meant a radio tower was in view, but which one?

I myself had gone downtown once again, only to find an even bigger crowd from the night before. I got the clue, thought about it a bit and then decided to go home and ponder it. But when I got in my car, instead of going home I pulled out my Treasure Hunter's Guide. I saw a park in there called Merriam Park that I had never been to, or even heard of before, but it looked hilly and had a radio tower in view according to the guide. I decided to go check it out.

I got there and parked on the street. Indeed there was a large hill there in the middle of the park. I climbed the hill and when I got to the top, I saw a large radio tower prominently in view. I also saw where the trees on the top of the hill parted to make way for a sledding hill that ended on the baseball fields down below. It was in that moment I felt I had found the right park. Of course I had thought that before and been wrong, but if I was right, it was definitely not going to be a long hunt unless the cluewriter had done something really clever.

The next day was Wednesday and it was only the fourth day of what could possibly be a 12 day hunt. Normally people are still scouting out parks at this point if even going out at all, but not this year. People were out digging already, each with a theory as to which park the coin was in. The melting snow made hunting pretty easy. A single person could practically search a small park alone in half a day.

That night, I found myself at the Pioneer Press yet again and the crowd there was what you might expect much closer to the end of a hunt than the beginning. Clue 5 when it came out, gave us a surprising amount of information. It basically told us we were looking for a park and rec center, a place with a parking lot, and a place with a playground. Many ran out to their favorite possibility that night to do some midnight digging already.

By now, I myself was convinced it was at Merriam and I wasn't even seriously considering anything else. Others were equally convinced it was at some other park. And of course others were still going from park to park to check out all the possibilities. But wherever people were, they were out in numbers. The next night at the Pioneer Press the line was already around the block and the traffic on Cedar was jammed as people waited for the clue to come out. Things had already grown to a fever pitch on Clue 6 and it seemed something would give soon, especially as the snow was continuing to melt.

Clue 6 did give us some hope though as it bragged about how the cluewriter(s?) had "devised ways to make it tough". It also made reference to diamonds. I had decided to take that day off of work as I really wanted to get out and hunt in the daylight. I passed people in Newell on the way. I talked on the phone to people in St. Anthony. And when I got to Merriam there were plenty of people there as well.

I had been there about an hour or so poking around when I decided to take a walk around the park to see if there was anything I had been missing. I came around the rec center to the parking lot and started talking to a woman who was checking out Merriam, but was pretty sure it wasn't there. She said she had a pretty good idea about another park. We debated a bit and then I kept going towards the hockey rink. It was at that point someone asked if I knew the number to call to find out if the medallion had been found yet. They had heard a rumor that it had. I had a cell phone, and someone else nearby had the number. I called and indeed the recording said it had been found in Merriam Park about an hour before. I looked around and there was a group of people standing in the middle of the baseball fields. I decided to head over and see if they had heard.

When I got there, it turned out they had indeed heard and they were discussing what happened. I had only been there a few minutes when the people who found the medallion returned to the park, medallion still in hand, for a mini-press conference. They showed us where they found it and told us the story.

It was a mother and son, both longtime hunters, who had come to the park to check it out as a possibility. They hadn't even planned on digging. But as they were looking around the kid stumbled on something in the snow. He kicked it to see what it was and the medallion popped up in the air. It had been sitting right there on one of the baseball diamonds near 2nd base. It was attached to the foil cover one finds on a canister of chips to keep the freshness seal intact. There was probably less than an inch of snow covering it, and had it not been found on Friday, with the weather the way it was, by Sunday one could have simply walked up to it and said, "Oh, there it is." Anyway, I got to hear the story and even see the actual medallion which was pretty exciting, but after the excitement waned, different feelings set in.

It was Friday afternoon. The weekend hadn't even started yet. As I lingered in the park talking with people, more people would show up. Some came to hunt, only to be greeted with the news it was already over. Others came already knowing it was over, just to see "the spot". The spot they never got to. The spot that they never even got to contemplate as a possibility because for so many the hunt was over before it had really even gotten a chance to start.

"Conserve your energy for the end," was a maxim that failed many who had no idea the end was so near so soon. People who had cleared their schedules for the weekend or even taken time off work suddenly found themselves with nothing to do. People who look forward to this all year had shovels and hoes that were never even exposed to the winter air.

There's always disappointment when a hunt ends and you're not the one who finds it, but generally, even if you don't win the game, you still get the chance to play. That wasn't the case for many this time. And it wasn't just a matter of someone getting lucky. There were some legitimate questions to be asked such as why was it put in the middle of a field when there was so little snow? The snow was already melting when the hunt started, with warm temperatures forecasted. Why didn't they move it? They claimed they had "devised ways to make it tough" and yet it was just sitting in the open where anyone could (and did) trip over it. Was it any wonder that people not only felt cheated out of the experience of the hunt, but practically lied to as well?

But in the end, what was there to do? The hunt was over and there wouldn't be another for a year. So we did what we always do. We had a Pity Party and our Rehash Bash, shared our stories and our pain, then wished each other well and parted ways until 2003. Because no matter who finds it in any given year, the hope of "there's always next year" keeps us going.

by Allison Wonderland

For further insights, information, and discussion of the hunt, join the treasure hunting club at The Allison Wonderland.

1. Whenever a snow emergency is declared, follow the snowplows around and completely dig out all the cars they plow in.
2. As a big storm is about to hit, stand on your front steps with your back to the yard. Toss your car keys over your shoulder. Go back inside and then go find them the next day.
3. Read up on Occam's Razor (All else being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the correct one).
4. Do every word jumble, crossword puzzle, and search-a-word you can get your hands on.
5. Make a list of all the things you can do with $10,000.
6. Turn off the heat in your home for 16 hours a day.
7. Only sleep three hours a night.
8. Move all the snow from your back yard to your front yard.
9. Spend all night on the Internet with total strangers discussing who killed JFK.
10. Commit the Cooler Crew and Treasure Hunter's Guide Websites to memory.