Puzzle #8: A Minnesota Treasure Hunt (2021)

The Setup

Now, I suppose you’re wondering what a postcard from a small town in rural Louisiana has to do with finding a treasure chest in Minnesota…

I trust you know by now that some puzzles are entirely armchair and some are treasure hunts that happen on the ground in Minnesota. Folks from all over have participated, won a little bit of money, scored some small wooden chests with plastic jewels, and it’s been a super cool thing to see unfold.

But if you haven’t figured it out by now, a story is unfolding. Some of you have caught on to this. For example, the clips shown in the trailhead for the first 40 seconds are all live action elements to the story. Sometimes the puzzle demands you to send an email or make a call, or visit another website, taking things past the YouTube medium and into other, familiar, real-world arenas.

If you weren’t at least vaguely sensing the story in the previous works, this puzzle may have been pretty meaningless to you—that’s on me, as I *REALLY* leaned into the story elements in this one.

If you’re still scratching your head and haven’t got time to catch up on prior puzzles and solutions, I recommend you watch the “Season One” finale video at the very least, which will give you a very cliff notes version of the story. However, there are many hidden clues inside previous puzzle and solution videos that will shed even more light on the story if you look closely enough.

Puzzle #8 used elements from pretty much every previous Puzzle, 1 thru 7. I’ll point those out along the way.

Puzzle #8 is all about advancing the story, and is easily the most ambitious puzzle devised yet.

The treasure hunt lasted roughly two days, starting on April 1st, 2021, and the folks who did the legwork made the find on the 3rd. Congrats go out to Todd Pitman, Josh Ellingson and Bobby Dunbar, who got a treasure box full of loot for their troubles!

Now, about that postcard…

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Part I: The Postcard

Puzzle #8 SOLUTION video (Part 1)

I'm going to proceed under the assumption that you've seen the Puzzle #8 trailhead video. If not, it's in the repository to the right, at the very top. We’re greeted with a splash screen from our favorite evil corporation, “Hornet Viking”, who has a user named Anne T waiting to make contact with another user through their app called Folkmoot, similar to what we know as Zoom.

Anne’s enjoying some wine and appears to be surfing the ‘net on her Hornet Viking laptop. (They’re EVERYWHERE, I tell ya.)

It’s happening at the same time and date of the video’s release, April 1, 2021.

Eventually the chat is connected, and her buzzed attention turns to the other party, who as of now, is unknown.

Anne tells us she’s just returned from a long hiking trip and came home to a large stack of mail that included a mysterious post card, and that she has attached scans of the front and back to the video call (how fortuitous).

Anne tells us it’s from “you-know-who”, and one peek at the postcard tells us a ton. The postmark tells us that the card was mailed from Grand Cane, Louisiana on October 17, 2020. It is addressed to Anne Thoriving—this is our friend Ken’s ex-wife! She doesn’t seem to be overly thrilled to hear from him.

She also refers to Ken’s search for his missing daughter Lena in very odd terms: “chasing that brat down” … and then she comments that Lena probably "doesn’t want to be found”, suggesting maybe she left on her own volition.

She mentions the post card was sent back in October of 2020 (just how long WAS that hiking trip?!?) and that there’s been no other attempts at contact from him that she’s aware of. She also mentions this is postcard is the first time she’s heard from Ken since their divorce which was “7-8 years ago”. She has no regrets because “the man is crazy”.

Anne is mystified at the origin of the postcard just as much as its motives. She is asking for the caller’s help (and by default, our help) in trying to figure out why this postcard was sent… it’s clearly got her worried, more about Ken than about Lena.

Anne gives us our quest, to help her find out what happened to Ken. The call ends and glitches out as it disconnects… and then we get blank black screen, over which plain DOS-like text appears. The text reads out “CTRL-V”, three times, then spits out a garbled string of alphanumeric mud soup:

Going back to Anne's video call, it could be easy to miss the "CTRL-X" that popped up quickly in the lower left of the screen, glitching as it did so. This happened three times in the video.

Veteran computer users know well that CTRL-X is the keyboard shortcut for “cut”, and CTRL-V is the command to paste, meaning some sort of data of any kind is cut from one source and then pasted into another.

If we look carefully to see what words Anne says at the moment of each CTRL-X-glitch, we get:
EVERY / FOURTH / CHARACTER

If we look at every fourth character in our string of alphanumeric mud soup, we get:

Sending an email to this address gets us an instant response from "Iron Clues". It consisted of a QR code, that when scanned, you'd be rudely greeted by a Rick Roll. (Yes, I went there.) Below that, players were directed to highlight invisible text at the bottom of the email, giving some hints and then pointing the player back to where they needed to look in the first place: the post card.

The highlighted text from the email read:

The words "this vid" contained a link to a video titled "5+5". It is in the media repository on the right. It gives us some basic clues: a man zipping up a jacket, cartoon marching band images of 5+5 equaling 10, marching to the beat of "Call Me" by Blondie. At the tail end, a voice that sounds very much like Ken is heard saying "I hope you can help me."

Shifting our attention to the front of the post card, we’re greeted with the old-timey facades of what one would presume to be the heart of Grand Cane, Louisiana.

On the lower left is a QR code. Not a Rick Roll this time. Scanning that brings us to Google Street View at the very location depicted on the post card: West Main Street in the tiny town of Grand Cane Louisiana…

And that’s it… that is what we have to work with: One side of a video chat, a postcard, a location on Google Street View, and a bunch of weird text that ultimately points us right back to the postcard.

With our clues from the 5+5 video in mind, let's focus on the back of the postcard. The zipper in the middle? Yeah, it’s there to aesthetically divide up the two halves of the post card. But it is your cue to pay heed to the zip codes on this post card. There are two of them: 94720 (the recipient) and 71032 (the sender).

The line “call it like you see it”, is to be taken literally. If we take our new bonus clues into consideration, it becomes quite clear: two two zip codes merge into one phone number we are supposed to call… and we are to call it like we see it: (947) 207-1032. (This number is no longer working.)

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Part II: Grand Cane, Louisiana

Puzzle #8 SOLUTION video (Part 2)

The voice of this mysterious person may sound familiar to you if you have been following the story. But if not, allow me to catch you up: This is Stinger. We were first introduced to him back in Puzzle #5, when a glitch in the puzzle video caused players to receive an email from Truck Puzzles Tech Support, telling us we weren’t supposed to see what we saw yet. Stinger signed off as the sender. He also appeared in Puzzle #6, putting a face and a voice to the name, and giving us a couple of huge clues toward solving that particular treasure hunt. Outside that, there’s little more we know about him.

The message has been left for Ken, and was left on the same day as the postmark on the postcard: October 17, 2020.

Well… what would Ken have done? We’re now thrust into Ken’s role and experiencing what he did on that day. We got the message, and Stinger wanted Ken to send him a text when he got it, so we respond as Ken might, sending a text to (947) 207-1032.

Stinger responds with a photo of a link to a sound file on vocaroo.com.

These must be the nav instructions that Stinger was referring to. But where is this place? If only we had a starting point.

If you recall, the QR code from the front of the post card dropped us into Google Street View at a specific point in Grand Cane Louisiana... well, you had to think this would become part of the equation at some point, right?

Welcome to Stage 2 of the Puzzle: What you’re meant to do is follow the nav instructions via Google Street View, to ultimately find a specific location. Stinger’s message to Ken says that “she” (presumably Ken’s daughter Lena) may have been spotted at a specific location, but needs to get a visual of the place to confirm it is indeed the property. It would seem Stinger’s getting his intel elsewhere, as he needs to confirm it with another party. What happens after that… who knows?

So here’s the game: We are put in Ken’s shoes and retracing his steps on that day, and it’s up to us to see where we need to go, or more accurately, where Ken went. The QR code on the front of the post card takes us to the starting point. We have the audio directions, but no specifics—no street names. Just simple distances and turns. We are not given an address or a description of the place, unfortunately. We just have to use the directions we get in the recording, put ourselves in the driver’s seat and hope we find the right place.

The pauses in between the audible instructions would indicate this might be the drive happening in the amount of time it actually takes to get there. In fact, we might assume this is the actual navigation recording session from Ken’s journey after receiving the nav instructions from Stinger.

The correct location was ultimately a very run down vacant trailer on a remote side street in Grand Cane. When a photo or screencap of this location was sent by the player and confirmed to be the correct place, Stinger responds with another QR code.

It’s a link to a video file from the Hornet Viking Database. We quickly realize this is the dashcam footage from Ken’s vehicle, labeled KT001. He’s apparently a “subject”.

The end of the journey leads us to an empty lot, save for a trailer that has clearly seen better days. THIS is where Lena may have been seen? Probably not a good sign. When breaking this video down, we’ll be referring to some really old puzzles along the way.

The first thing we see is that the video file is from the HVDB. The file format follows that of clips we’ve seen in past puzzles. It is from the same date as the postcard, and from the voicemail that Stinger left for Ken. This suggests Ken had gotten the nav instructions pretty quickly, and was soon on his way to his destination, and his HV Global System was recording all of it, probably without him knowing considering he’s labeled a “subject” in the lower right.

From the start of the video, there are beeps in the right channel of the audio. These are timed to the second at certain points in the video with the starting point to reference the second the video file actually begins.. To get the full mechanics of how this mini-puzzle works, refer to my very first Puzzle... number 1. Using those mechanics, the beeps, when decoded, spell out the word LONGITUDE. Put that one in your inventory.

You can hear what’s actually going on in the vehicle as well, such as the clicking of the radio knob. Then we are greeted with another character you might remember, radio DJ, “The Ghost”. Well he’s in multiple markets it would seem, as his silky smooth voice could be heard over a scene from Puzzle #5, helping us along the way.

Once again, it would seem The Ghost is in the right place at the right time, delivering us audio clues in much the same way as was the mechanic in Puzzle #2, which was the very first live treasure hunt puzzle. Audio clues are dropped along the journey, hidden in plan sight, straight out of The Ghost's mouth.

These numbers, coupled with our first clue, tell us we’re halfway towards a location, as we’ve got ourselves a longitude: -93.207552

We get an obligatory Hornet Viking radio ad (I tell ya, they’re everywhere!), and the radio reception starts to get staticky as Ken reaches his destination. The HV global system conveniently reminds Ken to make sure our contact gets a photo of this junk heap to send back for confirmation. Ken turns off the car to wait for a response, takes the keys out of the ignition, and that’s it.

…or is it?

On the HVdb site at the time (no longer an active site), just under the video, was a link… “to parent directory”. Clicking that link brings us to a Windows 95-esque directory, one level up, where there are links to THREE videos under this directory. We’ve just seen KT001. Let’s see where Ken’s adventures have taken him next.

In KT002, Ken is filming this time, presumably from his own phone or camera. (or perhaps his phone was also the dashcam used in KT001).

He’s decided to poke around the exterior of the trailer before considering going inside. Just inside the dented in doorway sits a small treasure box, very similar to ones found at the end of all past treasure hunts. Ken reaches inside just enough to grab it and pulls it out of the gap in the doorway. The video ends there.

Back to the parent directory, We see there’s a third video file: KT003, and there’s an attachment icon next to it..

In the KT003 video, Ken’s returned to his car with the small chest and decides to film the “unboxing”, feeling very uneasy at the place he’s found himself and at what he ought to do next. He opens the chest. Inside are 4 yellow gems, one note and a pair of blue stone earrings. Ken immediately recognizes the earrings as ones he gifted to Lena on her 14th birthday, and overcome with a wave of emotion, decides he wants to take a look inside the trailer, despite Stinger’s warning not to start any trouble.

He opens the note, but to him it seems like an annoyance because he REALLY wants to get a peek inside that trailer. He gives us a quick peek at it, admitting some elements of it seem familiar to him, but said he’d attach the document to the video file, then he leaves his vehicle, and the video cuts out.

Sure enough, at the end of the video feed, the URL where the document was uploaded flashes on the screen. Following that takes us to a scan of the note found in the chest, which is attached to the media repository at right.

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We’ve reached the end of the road with Ken’s travels as he exited his vehicle to have a peek inside that abandoned trailer in Grand Cane, Louisiana, and he’s left us with this note that he found. Mighty nice of him, wouldn’t you say?

It’s a printout of the same email that Stinger sent out to players who'd "lost their way" back in Puzzle #5, with some annotations.

There are clusters of colored hexagons, and near each one is a small sketch. You’ll recall in KT003 Ken did say a couple of these annotations looked familiar, especially "the bottom one".

Going back to all of the prior treasure hunt puzzles, you may remember Ken had increasingly interfered at the treasure sites, initially with the goal of enlisting the help of me and my daughter to help find HIS missing daughter, Lena. Ken’s appeal to find her has since been passed on to all of us, since nobody of any authority had taken her disappearance seriously with her history of running off, Anne Thoriving included.

These sketches are of past treasure sites.

He remembered the one at the bottom most, as that was where the pretense was finally dropped and Ken made himself and his appeal for help known, approaching me in person at the "Puzzle #6 treasure site. Not long after that, he ran. Looks like a couple weeks later he resurfaced in Louisiana, was working with Stinger on some type of “mission”, and his trail runs cold from here…

We can definitely make hay out of three of the four sketches—we have seen these before. The one at the top, though? Not so much. Could this be the elusive Puzzle #8 treasure? Where do we go from here?

Once again, Stinger is here to help! In the bottom of his email, from Puzzle #5, he’s given us a ticket number. It’s worn and a little tough to read but it comes out to read “4 5 2 3 7 4 8 8”.

If you’ve made it this far into this whole adventure, a lightbulb may be flashing here… this is our missing latitude coordinate! Wow, that Stinger chap sure is timely, ain’t he?

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Part III: Finding The Treasure!

Puzzle #8 SOLUTION video (Part 3)

With our coordinates set (45.237488 N, -93.207552 W), we're brought to a small, out of the way place called Lund's Pine Creek Park in Ham Lake, Minnesota. With the goal plainly in sight, the player closes in.

A locked green box is mounted to the back of the large sign that sits at the entrance of the park. It's secured by a 4-digit Master combination lock. Each number dial has a colored stripe next to it.

The lock also forces us to go back to the note that Ken found in Grand Cane. The colored stripes correspond to the number of hexes on the note for each color, which also correspond to the number of jewels found at each treasure site: 4 6 8 7

To the victors go the spoils!

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