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With the release of the first three clues for the 2013 Hugo Good Neighbor Days Search For Spike, the 2013 hunting season is officially under way. Having found six of the summer festival medallions last year, and being more organized and determined this year, we are in a position to capture even more festival treasure this summer. At this time, we know of 14 cities having treasure hunts this summer with prizes ranging from $100 to $1500 depending on the hunt. To help keep tabs on the hunts, we've added a block to the right hand side of this page called "Today's Events" which shows whatever events are in our site calendar that are going on today.

Let's go Cooler Crew and capture some treasure!

What a way to close out a milestone year for the Cooler Crew! Coincidence or not, after a slew of red herrings from the clue writer, we ended up digging back in the birthplace of the Crew -- well, the in-person birthplace of the Crew anyway -- Cherokee Heights Park. Of course things have changed since those early days. After two weeks out in the frozen tundra, we've decided to wimp out for the rehash, and nowdays have it indoors, typically in the shelter at Newell Park, and this year was no different.

Just as with the Predig, we met a lot of new friends, and welcomed back some old ones. After a years-long hiatus, KT returned and assumed co-MC responsibilities with Redbear. Those two just make a great comedic team when it comes to justifying which door prizes go to which winner. This year's door prizes were rounded out with plenty of PP swag, rightfully "acquired"  from the press conference and winner's party at Gabe's (and from the Vulcan Victory Dance the night before), along with the requisite clue-related prizes: a copy of Joel Barker's Paradigm book, plenty of Vinyl from the band "Head East" and Bing Crosby, and DVDs of the "movie" Mashed Rice, er, Archimedes, and crazy food items like Yellow Mashed Rice, Morton Salt, and Little Debbie Honey Buns.

Since, of course, this Crew knows how to eat, and no Rehash would be complete without a smorgasbord of yummy food, there was also a healthy dose of clue-related food, all of which was served at the aptly-named "Generally East Buffet". Red herring abounded, from actual picked herrign with red food color added, to Swedish-"herring" infused red Jell-O cups, "bluff"alo wings, Jumble-aya, "Barked Fences", and Me2's, Jake's, and BFG's "I'll eat my right nut" meatballs and "I'll drink my own pee" Lemon bars (you had to be on Facebook to understand where that came from). Let's not forget the absolutely beautiful cake Blackmamba decorated to look like the part of Cherokee Park the medallion was discovered in.

As has been customary, the finders joined us, a really sweet couple those two are, and were presented the annual Golden Pick award, and Cluey handed out the prizes to the winners of the Park Pick Pool, Redbear and the combination of Jake and Leelabell (whose prize was accepted on their behalf by Art Vandelay).

All in all, it was a great close to a decade and a half of the Cooler Crew, and a week and a half of hunting on the tundra. We're looking forward to an even better second fifteen years, and lots more weeks and a half worth of hunts. But if you really haven't got enough of a hunting fix, stay tuned for AW's mock hunt which will be starting just around the corner!

The 2013 Predig Gig was arguably one of the best we've had to date. With over 60 people in the group shot here, we probably had somewhere around 150 people come through the doors over the course of the evening. We had the entire banquet room at Joseph's Grill on Wabasha, plus as the room cleared out, we had a huge portion of the dining room. As always we welcomed back old friends and welcomed in new friends!

Joseph's provided their $15.00 pasta bar: all you can eat pasta, cooked up to order with whatever veggies, meat, pasta, and sauce you wanted. Great food for a great deal! The plate is sure a lot bigger than it looks when you're making your selections for sure. After people ate in the banquet room, the tables were rolled up and the lights dimmed as the room became a dance floor. For people preferring conversation, the dining room was available and coolerheads mingled back and forth between the two.

Mom provided the annual Cooler Crew button, while Lil'man's son provided the DJ services for the evening. Clue Master organized the two park pick pool boards, each worth $125. Thanks go to Allison Wonderland for organizing the whole event! Everyone is looking forward to reprising the location next year!

Follow the hunt on our 2013 treasure hunt page.

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.