Puzzle #2: A Minnesota Treasure Hunt

The very first Truck Puzzles Minnesota Treasure Hunt began with another YouTube video on July 3, 2020. It was a two-part puzzle that involved not only figuring out the treasure’s location, but then going to that location and finding it.

First and foremost, congratulations go out to Tim & Michelle of Bloomington, MN, who were able to pinpoint the treasure box just off a walking path in a park along the east side of Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis! It took 5 days from the time the treasure was buried until it was discovered. I was told these two are land surveyors, so once you see how the puzzle is solved, you’ll be able to see why they were able to figure this one out. But with some patience, this really is one that anybody could have solved.

(The next section is best read while following along with the SOLUTION video.)

By its very design, you know this is a treasure map, and the “X marks the spot” confirms it. As you no doubt noticed, there is a lot happening here, both for the eyes and the ears, and the trick to solving this, is parsing out what you’re looking at, and what you’re listening to.

The first major hint is in looking at the compass. You have your East, your South, and where West should be you have an ear. Also, where North should be, you have an eye. (The fact that it’s an Illuminati eye is irrelevant here.) GPS coordinates for a location are typically represented by a Latitude, which is either north or south of the equator, and a Longitude, which measures in an East-West direction. These strings of numbers together can pinpoint a precise location anywhere on the planet.

What the compass is telling you is that to get the Latitude, you need to use your eyes, and to get the Longitude, you need to use your ears.

So, let’s tackle this one thing at at time.

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Audio & Visual Clues

You’ll notice at about the 16 second mark that the video cuts out with a shot of a tree, with some quick hits of a treasure box in there. This is meant to signify both that this is indeed a treasure hunt, and that this tree is important. Later in the video at about 40 seconds, it cuts to what looks like a smiley face at the base of a tree. It can be assumed that this is the same tree that’s referenced earlier in the video. At the 45 second mark, this same smiley face flashes briefly on the book, then on the X on the treasure map, which is, yep, at the base of a tree. So this is telling you right where to find the treasure, assuming you can also figure out the coordinates. On to that part of the puzzle.

A closer look not only gives you numbers but also the order in which the numbers should go. So if you look at the newspaper clipping, you see that the woman with the #44 race bib has a headline above her that says “Area Woman Is First”. From there, you can see the other phrases that will guide you… like 90-second pity party, or third rail, and “end”. So if we put the numbers together in order of first, second, third, and end, we should have 44, 90, 80 and 57. That will give us our Latitude of N 44.908057. Latitude is no good without a longitude, so let’s figure that one out. That clue is all in the audio. So let’s just listen and follow along.

Listening to the audio, we get a broken stream of radio broadcasts, almost like someone is scrolling through the dial. If we listen closely, we can hear a total four numbers in the audio. In order, they are 93, 23, 75, and 55. Put together, the audio clues present us with a longitude of 93.237555 W.

Plugging these coordinates into Google Maps, or whatever mapping software you prefer, puts us smack in the middle of this triangle in a walking path on the east side of Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis. If you follow the map from the center of this triangle, you should have no trouble locating the tree and the smiley face rock where the treasure is buried!

And the treasure contained…. 7bluegems! Unfortunately they’re little cheap plastic ones, but still pretty cool, right?

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Wait, This Wasn't In The Script

Now, remember the part where I said there were some really odd things about this whole deal? This is where that comes into play, and I’ll be honest, both things kind of freaked me out a little. Tim and Michelle sent me a photo of their find as proof that the treasure had indeed been discovered. Well, there was a blue object in the lid of the box, that I DID NOT PUT THERE! I had no clue what that item was, so I asked them to send a pic of that over to me, and they said it was a “hornet sticker”. That is certainly what it looks like. But I don’t have any idea how it got there or who put it there.

That makes me think a little more about something that happened when we were actually burying the treasure on July 2nd. My daughter was filming me doing an intro piece for the puzzle, which I ultimately didn’t use because I didn’t want to give away the location by accident. I also really wanted to share this part with you all much sooner but didn’t for the same reason—didn’t want to give away the location.

So, as I’m doing my bit, my daughter notices there’s someone on the walking path behind me.

My knees are garbage so I wasn’t about to sprint after him. The guy ultimately walked away and that was the end of it. A couple of guys with a dog had seen what happened talked to us soon after this and told us they had seen that guy kind of skulking around the park before. I’d pretty much forgotten all about that weirdo until Tim & Michelle sent me the treasure photo with that weird sticker in it. If I didn’t put it there… could it have been random weirdo guy? Like I said—an unexpected twist for sure… we may never know what happened! But at the end of the day, Tim & Michelle did a great job of solving this and went home with one more prize than I expected!

EDIT: My daughter, who helped me bury the treasure for this hunt, is 100% convinced she has seen the symbol on the mysterious sticker that appeared in the treasure box, but can't place it.