When I was in my mid teens I hiked the trail around Lake Louise. I had a superlative Yes song going through my head. I thought of a mini game called Treasure of the Silver Dragon. Don't ask for details, how it worked, because there never were any. There would have been a map in there. This gave me a great feeling. But nothing came of it.

So what about a treasure hunt, "Treasure of the Silver Dragon"? The prize is fifty silver coins.

.. and, alas, there already is a treasure hunt called "Silver Dragon's Hoard". It's Canada too.
 

Q: How is Silver Dragon's Hoard different from the proposed Thesaurus Canada?

A: Silver Dragon's Hoard is solving riddles for various amounts of money, not exactly a treasure hunt. It is all online, with no book to buy or physical treasure to pick up. Also Quebec is verboten.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Treasures and Hunts
 

Or should it be kept secret?
 
 

I'm warming to having a standard prize at $5,000, with some lower. * One prize is $10,000 *. See pazoozas on the Treasure page. The $10,000 prize is a selling point, a cause for excitement.

Also, can you lend me $40,000?
 
 

Ghost story! There could be clues to a hunt in a ghost story. Entertaining, even if you don't figure it out. Debatable glimpses into a different view of the world, in two ways.
A murder mystery might be better from a clues point of view, but that is a bloodier business.
A spy story is not out of the question.
 

A cloak and dagger themed prize? That sounds dubious even to me, but neat components. "Cloak and dagger" is vague, but a couple of board games (Watergate, Shifty Eyed Spies, maybe Mind Management), books, mystery thriller, likely a code book, wallet lock pick set. And money.
 
 

Hidden Gems
 
 

Easter Egg Hunt
 
 

Silver something or other. Coins. Silver alpaca ..
 
 

The lower value prizes can be more colourful.
 

(Night) Out on the Town. Restaurant, coffee and danish store, tickets for the show, the game, you get the idea. Spendin' money. Gift card for clothing store. Casino chips! Local. Art gallery, play, beer garden ..
 

Cosy cabin. Games and books and puzzles, an object, art something. Skip the Dishes. What would you do for this prize? Maybe it needs a woman's touch.
 
 

A hunt that bends toward the Chinese Canadian crowd. Some Chinese writing. The prize is nine small gold dragon coins, for the year of the dragon. Could be in one of those new year envelopes, used to give money. I would find a way to get in Lanterns, a Chinese Canadian board game. Some free eatin' at the restaurants in Richmond.
 
 

Bit coin and bat coin. One of each in a tiny treasure chest. Possibly physical bit coin.
 
 

It would please me to have someone on the west coast get a prize that included east coast treats. Junk food, jam jams cookies, drinks including alcohol. But this is consumables. Alcohol too. That means going through hoops. An object, e.g. a model ship. Nova Scotia book or two.
 
 

I wonder how hard it is to set up a gift card to some store, like Cal's Cacti.
 
 

Medical charity raffles, e.g. the Tri-Hospital Dream Lottery, happen. Everybody wins. The treasure finder would get half tickets in an envelope and would not need to fill out anything. Well .. the devil's in the details. I like that, particularly the higher-value ones.
 
 

Arctic themed prize. The arctic has diamonds (hidden gems?). Nunami is a genuine Canadian arctic board game, apparently good too. The inevitable art work. Toonies, some have glow-in-the dark northern lights (shrugs shoulders).
 
 

There are books that have the pages placed randomly and you have to figure it out. We could do something like that, get a poem or something and .. no, that's secret.
 
 

Drinks, entire categories, baskets. That's stupid, so no. But I wouldn't be me if I didn't consider it.
 
 

What about a map? A classic pirate's x-marks-the spot map?
 
 

How about a treasure hunt where the different designers each do one aspect of it? Not going to happen, but something to ponder.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I find I like the medium hunts, like above, and I guess the small hunts. As opposed to the monster million dollar hunts, of which there are two famous ones out right now. My opinion is based on not much, and I could be wrong.
 
 
 
 

There should be a culture of secrecy to 1) preserve the integrity of the game and 2) prevent designers and their people being harassed. But there is a third, awkward little reason. I want designers to go in their own direction rather than succumbing to groupthink.
 
 
 
 

On paper evaluation means a hunt is accepted or not. But in practise I think it will be messier, greyer, less complete than that. I'm looking at Level 1 and Level 2 evaluation. Level 1 means "you're in" (sort of, not published). Level 2 is a more thorough scrub with the goal of perfecting the hunt. But this is a conversation among peers. "This clue doesn't work so well. Do you think you have an alternative?"
 
 
 
 

Muttering to myself:
Should I evaluate all the hunts for Thesaurus Canada?
I like spreading out evaluation so that no one person knows all the secrets. I would not be a gatekeeper, and I would do less work in a team of peers. Also people will have different tastes and perspectives.
On the other hand, a publisher would want to have a single point of contact. I would like to present the publisher with a recommended set of treasure hunts. That is best done by having me evaluate all the hunts, or at least aspects of them.
French would be a challenge. And someone is supposed to evaluate my hunt.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

"The greatest treasure hunt across Canada". It's difficult to argue with that. They've got a single huge prize, plus a dozen across the country. Even the lesser prizes are big enough to drag people out to look for them, probably not all that far spread out too. Free.

But I still think the proposed Thesaurus Canada is best.
 
 
 
 
 
 

This is used to promote mining something*. It's not a book. It's a poem on their website and you have to keep going to their social media. I wonder if people will be somehow turned off because it deals with mining.
 
 
 

* Others have done this, including Forrest Fenn using a treasure hunt as bait for his autobiography.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

(It is assumed that treasure hunts won't be overt about the region, but there's no rule against this.)

I would find it cute to have a treasure hunt explicitly for city x, with a lesser prize such as a little gold coin. "Maybe don't book a flight on Air Canada to pick this up". Vancouver for example, or a smaller city. This would also work for local sponsorship.
 
 

What do you think of this as a prize? Twenty $50 bills, a $1,500 little gold coin, a $500 Canadian Tire gift card (provided by the company) and a $500 Skip the Dishes gift card. Different experiences. $3,500.

I'm tempted to make a red triangle $500 Canadian Tire gift card as a prize, for a small city.
 
 
 

Information about the hunts would be in the introduction, so the chapters with the puzzles would be clean.
 
 

We're going to have to think about treasure out there and snow on the ground.
 
 

It would be great to have this book available before Christmas (no, not this Christmas).
 
 

Muttering to myself:
I would like to see treasure hunts with poems, ciphers and such, cryptic art, nonfiction/autobiograhpy/story, word search, a map? and other puzzles that don't fit in these categories. This variety between hunts is a key reason why I like Thesaurus Canada. But I think in practise there will be a set of poems.
 
 

There are formal quotas for geography and language. In addition there is a soft quota for types of treasure hunt. Poem, cipher, story, art. I may be oversimplifying things.
 
 

There are formal quotas for geography and language. In addition there is a soft quota for types of treasure hunt. Poem, cipher, story, art. I may be oversimplifying things.
 
 

Maybe there should be a time limit for the proxy prizes.
 
 

I will officially change the British Columbia region to Mountains, including part of Alberta. It will make geographical requirements a bit easier, if there is no B.C. designer. It will make this less useful.
 
 

Evaluating a treasure hunt in French is going to be something.
 
 

After a hunt is over, people will want to know where the treasure was placed. Designers can think of this early, maybe take photographs.
 
 

I've settled on total $40,000 total treasure. $50,000 is a memorable number. Hmm..
Let's say 25 cents from each book sold goes to a bitcoin wallet. With 50,000 books sold, that would mean $12,500. "The total treasure is estimated to be $50,000". With five regions, people can do some dubious math.
 
 

The Team page has been changed to make it less intimidating. Maybe later the pendulum will swing back the other way, with an emphasis on quality, professionalism and let's not forget creativity.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I'm looking at a jungle/island theme for a treasure. Consider pirate treasure if that makes you feel better. Konane made in Hawaii, Tobago on this page, a bit of jewellery. I would like to add in two small bottles of the rare ackee drink from Jamaica, and a nice little bottle of sorrel. Serbat wangi (powdered drink packets) from Indonesia would be doable. There would be packing issues.
 
 

Hmm .. a pile of Air Miles, helpfully provided by Air Canada?
 
 

Trinkets from different places around the world? Ehh .. uh .. pros and cons. Categorisation problems. A little fish knife from Czechia, good for picking mushrooms. Serbat wangi, maple/ice wine candies from Quebec, a colour cube from Japan. One can get a lock puzzle from Israel. Could have jungle chess from Hong Kong. I'm selling myself on this.
 
 

Trinkets that I think are neato. These things overlap, as you will see. The funny Non Campus Mentis book. A little west African Yoté game, made in China.
 
 

Having a woman's touch is another approach.
 
 

Treasure that says treasure, deluxe. Out with the made-in-China yoté, in with the fancy Royal Game of Ur. Jewellery and gems come to mind. Check out the the treasure for hunts in France.
 
 

Here is a template to work with: All three of 1. Money 2. An object, something to show people, likely valuable. Who doesn't like a gold coin? 3. "Flowers", extra fun and interesting things.
 
 

Drinks and other consumables could not be done because of shelf life and storage conditions. If they are replaced every few months, that solves some problems. I would be happy if I opened a treasure chest and saw some Australian black licorice.
 
 

And there's the aesthetic approach. Amber/gold, bending toward the theme of your choice. Honey, gold.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

How about a hunt somehow involving the Tourism Board of .. Beaverville? They would know their place and be motivated, but the big advantage is they would provide their own treasures, and would not be in a rush to ask for money. This would be explicitly in Beaverville, but with an intended audience well beyond Beaverville. If their website is in the book, the searchers would go through it, and the tourism people would be happy and inclined to open their wallet.
 
 

"Hmm .. $40,000 treasure plus (50,000 books x .25 =) $12,500 in bitcoin. Total treasure 'estimated' $50,000?"

Money going to multiple designers who pay for prizes, coming from multiple sources, would be a mess. Maybe establishing a target, e.g. $50,000 total prizes, won't really work. So what is the process?

I should look into how much authors get paid, but I'm not in a rush to do so.
 
 

Crowdfunding! Kickstarter, Indiegogo. This funding business is more fun than I expected.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

There will be a bigger game for seekers as they try to figure out which hunts go with which authors in which zones, using clues beyond the puzzles in the treasure hunts. I have mixed feelings about this. The French one is almost certainly in Quebec.
 
 
 
 

So for a neato story for a story treasure hunt - no, can't share that.
 
 
 
 

It occurred to me that there could be one treasure hunt where different designers contribute their own sections. I figured it wouldn't actually happen in the real world, but I'm reconsidering that. That could work.

Also hunters could go to more than one place to get to the one treasure, like in a movie. There are ways to do this.
 
 
 
 

A treasure with casino chips, hospital lottery entries, and bitcoin that varies based on book sales. There's a common theme to this. A free entry into the Silver Dragon hunt too. "The treasure could be nothing."
 
 
 
 

"Trinkets from different places around the world? Ehh .. uh .. pros and cons. Categorisation problems. A little fish knife from Czechia, good for picking mushrooms. Serbat wangi, maple/ice wine candies from Quebec, a colour cube from Japan. One can get a lock puzzle from Israel. Could have jungle chess from Hong Kong. I'm selling myself on this."

Okay. So what goes in this? Junk food is allowed. And I do fancy adding a pile of air miles, provided by the airline. I really like the museum piece silver alpaca from Peru, but that's for another day. We have some neat maori things from New Zealand, including a little haitiki. Games are not straightforward. A local game might be made in another place. Lapis lazuli from Afghanistan? Nobody said there had to be many items.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I would like to make the Thesaurus Canada book. This is an ambitious, unprecedented project. Meanwhile I have not implemented a proper treasure hunt, outside of Christmas fun. A young lady suggested doing a single local treasure hunt first, to spread the word and get experience and get confidence.

There are pros and cons for this. I figured no. But it is exciting, and closer to hand. I picture this being free, on a website, with a prize worth one or two grand. Although not strictly necessary, I picture a dedicated website (for.. ).

I would not want to implement a treasure hunt made by me. Someone else would make the puzzle and have a dominant say in the treasure contents, while I contribute to X, Y and Q, the everything else.There are two main reasons for this.
I don't want people to associate my flavour of treasure hunt with Manitoba. Thesaurus Canada would have a national audience of book buyers. Treasure hunts can be delicate things.
I have a limited supply of great material, and I want to save this for the book.
Having a separate designer would also be what happens with most of Thesaurus Canada.
It's also comforting to have someone else involved in the project. To put it differently, I'm too chicken to do it myself.
Certain hunts merit certain treasures.

Movie trailer. Introduction hunt. Prototype. What's the term I'm looking for? Pilot project?

"Bison Hunt" is a cute name, although not too logical.
 
 

This would get the word out to people about the bigger Thesaurus Canada project. I need designers. This would be something to point to when trying to get publishers and designers across the country involved.

This would be a good way to get experience. Getting designers. All those proposed procedures, like evaluation level 1 and level 2, could be run through. Where is the money coming from? How do you get businesses and tourism people to contribute to the prize? How would a proxy prize work, if that is done? Can you easily remove a gold coin from its case and put it back in? Are you allowed to put a treasure chest in Assiniboine Park, and remove it? What questions would people ask? What are the answers? Who is responding to e-mails? How would it be promoted?

If it's a failure, it's better to fail on a small scale than a large scale.

This would move a dedicated website forward.
 
 

I would have to somehow track down someone locally who would make a treasure hunt. And hope that the person's treasure hunt would be good. And hope that the person will do it for free.

(A published treasure hunt book would mean money coming in).

I would have to pay a bunch for a prize.

A dedicated website would mean paying for it every month. With no money coming in. Some website work too.

Like Thesaurus Canada, one possible source of money for the prize is the designer. A designer might not like working to make a treasure hunt and then paying for it. With no money coming in.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Both Thesaurus Canada and Bison Hunt have murky futures. They have distinctly different problems, challenges. Thesaurus Canada is ambitious, national, commercial, with a lot of moving parts. It will be taken seriously. The local Manitoba hunt with the working title Bison Hunt is free, for fun. This should be pretty easy to do. However, I would not make the puzzle myself for convoluted reasons, so the creative side of it will somehow be outsourced, and the finances are not good. I'm not in a rush to dive in that pool.
 
 
 
 
Muttering to myself:

Thesaurus Canada has tough rules for treasure hunts being in every provincial region. Could that be relaxed in the interest of moving the project forward? Something to toy with.
 
 

Nah, Bison Hunt will not be done. I will stop yapping about it. The key reason is I can't make the puzzle myself.