2000 Allison Wonderland Mock Hunt

This is a two part clue. The clue in the first paragraph is the "key" to the treasure. The letter "k" appears once in the paragraph. The letter "e" nine times, and the letter "y" 8 times. Picture 198 at www.treasurehunt.8m.com portrays Tilden Park and the swingset. Granted it was a very obscure clue, but the payoff was high if anyone caught it. Originally I miscounted the number of e's, not catching the second one in the word "treasure". I noticed this a few minutes before I mailed out the first clue and did a quick rewrite, changing "all you women and men" to "and fulfill that noodling yen" making for one less e in the paragraph. But I forgot to change it on my master list, hence the two versions.

The second paragraph, particularly "look in seconds for doubles" referred to the fact that the second line of each stanza had one word with a double letter in it. Taking the double letters in order, they spelled out "page seventy two", the page in the Treasure Hunter's Guide that shows Tilden Park.

Each line refers to a number of arches, hence the question, "How many in a row?" The first line refers to the arch of a foot, so that would be one arch. The second line refers to the "Golden Arches" that are usually high above a McDonalds. There are two of those. The last line names four arches as the word arch goes before angel, bishop, enemy, and duke to make arch angel, arch bishop, arch enemy, and arch duke. Since the first line has one arch, the second line has two, the fourth line has four, one would deduce that the third line, the hiding place of the Medallion, has three. This would be the three arches of the swingset visible in picture 198. Since this was the only clue that made specific mention of the hiding place, and not being merely near or in sight, it would follow that this was the object to be named in your guess.

This clue refers to the Space Tower at the State Fair. In that general area it is the only that rises that high on the horizon, particularly when viewed from the park as evidenced in picture 198. Now if only I had my directions straight, the last part of the clue hinted that you needed to be looking west to see the thing and thus the park was east of it.

This one was fairly straightforward. It referred to the fact that there was a gate within sight of the hiding place. The map for Tilden in the Guide points out that it is made of brick and iron. Though it doesn't specifically call it a gate, one should be able to tell that from its position.

"Ground" is the word common to FAIRground and PLAYground, both of which were visible from the hiding place (and even if you couldn't see the fairgrounds in the picture, you knew they were there from the Space Tower).

The "triumverate of quintuple-faceted polyhedrons" referred to the three pyramid shapes on the playground near the swingset. They are pretty clearly visible in picture 198.

The capital sign to look for was the Albany Ave. street sign. Marathon and prickly people were subtle clues alluding to the fact that the capital in question was in New York, as was the fact that the lines of the clue ended with N-Y-N-Y. Albany borders Tilden park on the South side.

If you start with a Mounds candy bar, and then add almonds, you have an Almond Joy. (Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't.) Almond Ave is the northern border of Tilden Park.

Now trying to find a word with a double "y" isn't easy. Eventually I decided to just make one up. The knight being left in a jumble suggests there may be an anagram nearby. After the jumble all that was left was "an otter's ear". Even in this bizarre little clue that phrase had to seem particularly strange. Rearranged, it spells "Arona Street", the third and final street bordering the park.

If you read the last line out loud and slide the "s" over a bit, it will come out as "Won't you try page seventy-two?" There are two parks on that page of the Treasure Hunter's Guide. It shouldn't take too much work to figure out which one was the correct one. But just in case, the word Señor, with the tilde over the n, tilde n, would suggest Tilden.