This is about the size of the palm of your hand. Worth CAD $30,000. Kraft plunked this in a random (heavy?) box of macaroni and cheese, known as Kraft Dinner, in Canada. This is a mix of attractive and silly. It is plain. The marketing people had social media people take temporary possession of this. One person took it on a helicopter ride.
 
 
 
 

Trinkets. Jewellery works in a number of ways. Craft, art. Book. Game. Whatever floats your boat. (Japanese) CMY cube. Trinkets might make it look more like a garage sale than a classy treasure chest. Casino chips? DVDs?

Tickets and gift cards. Imagine you are a Toronto person and you are offered season tickets not for a specific sport, but the sport of your choice. I don't know if people do physical tickets any more. Tickets for events won't work anyway because of timing. Gift cards are another matter. You know how your city has that once-a-year craft/art show where you can buy things? It would be all kinds of good if the finder gets a gift card for that. On a practical level that would not work. Physical "art bucks"?

Consumables are unfortunately a no because of storage conditions. I imagine hard candies like those fine maple ice wine candies would survive. I guess alcohol could get into trouble. Honey would survive.
 
 
 
 

Your classic pirate/D & D/Tolkien treasure chest with coins and some glittering items is good, pretty, also expected, although there are alternatives. Could we somehow have the treasure chest and the trinkets semi separate? For example, the arctic diamond and toonies in a chest, but the arctic boardgame Nunami is outside the chest.
 

It's nice to have a prize that's worth a lot because it will lead to buzz, excitement going through Canadian society.
 
 
 
 

There could be even more cloak and dagger than you think. There are the related matters of secrecy and people not wanting to be harassed. Listen to a few seconds of this.

If I actually managed to corral five designers, I would keep things cagey, distant at first, for two separate reasons. One is to encourage people to go down their own distinct path for how to design their hunt. It's good for creativity. The other is for secrecy, like above. If someone talks to any one designer, all the tricks and locations will not be known.

On the other hand, the group would have reasons to talk with each other, over time. Ideas could be shared. Somebody might be good at making puzzles, but not boots on the ground. A designer may want help with artists, treasure, or language. The puzzles could be evaluated.

A treasure hunt should not be too easy because it would get solved right away, players would no longer have a challenge, and books would not be bought. A treasure hunt should not be too hard because players would be frustrated and put off, urban areas get redeveloped over time, and designers die. That's an advantage to having a variety of treasure hunts.

Canada has snow, and seasons.

There will be some tension between population and territory/provinces. There are reasons to involve the different regions. However, readers/searchers and, more importantly, designers will be in the more populous provinces. Ontario has 16 million, almost 40% of Canada's 40 million. Meanwhile the four Maritime provinces have a total of 1.9 million people. Do you know any credible treasure hunt designers in New Brunswick?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Picture what it would be like if one person, Ralph, made a published treasure hunt. Ralph is excited, full of ideas and purpose. Ralph has no need to worry about how serious Ralph is about this. Ralph is largely in control. Although Ralph has a biased, limited perspective, he knows how good his hunt is. There would be no need to share his vital secrets with Tom, Dick and Harry. Ralph is not going to do something shady with the treasure because no. Above all, Ralph would not need to corral and deal with designers from far-flung parts of the country. The publisher would deal with him, and he gets the money.

But this is different.
 

So who should apply to be a treasure hunt designer? A person in Canada who has already created and implemented a treasure hunt with this kind of scale. But this is unikely.

Individuals can bring something to the table - but not all things. There are the geographical considerations. Somebody has to do French*. Various puzzly things, including treasure hunts. Experience with escape rooms and video game puzzles is good (both outside my experience). Doing - either designing or solving - the classic word puzzles. Being a writer, doing fiction, nonfiction or even poetry, might be useful. Some people are knowledgeable, able and willing boots on the ground, travellers. Knowing about ciphers is preferable to not knowing about ciphers. Having a different approach to the treasure hunt may be useful. Being or having an artist is good. Knowing about Canadiana, really all kinds of interests and perspectives, can be useful. Even just being excited, serious and dependable by itself can be good.

I picture each designer being responsible for every aspect of his own hunt. At the same time there is a supportive team to help out with weaknesses and questions and quality control.
 

* The rule is minimum one treasure hunt in Quebec, and one in French. Probably the same thing.
 
 

You know, the types of people to solve the hunts is almost a mirror of this.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

One treasure hunt with a set of classic puzzles, mostly word/letter puzzles. Lower complexity - no crazy thinking outside the box - but higher quantity, with each puzzle adding a letter or two. This appeals to me, people would find this approachable, and it is different. Grandma, Ned, and little Sally can help out. In the real world this by itself would not work in a proper published treasure hunt book. Sudoku, word search, cryptogram, crossword puzzle. An easier cipher.

You know .. we could have an easier treasure hunt, and the prize is a treasure chest set of trinkets, special items chosen by the designers. This may open the door to consumables.

I'm warming to the idea of one easy pickings treasure hunt per book, with a less valuable but interesting prize. What would be in the prize pack for the "Night on the Town" hunt?
 
 

Charity could find a role in the prizes.
 
 

A murder mystery. The suspects are Victoria, Albert, Winnie, John, Charlotte, Brandon, Fred. Which person is the one? Well that's grim. There's also Einstein's fish. More cleanly logical, for better or worse.
 
 

The Voynich Manuscript, where weird symbols are words. I doubt that would work.
 
 

I think of this as not a book but a small series of books. One treasure hunt could have Chinese writing. It's not so much a matter of the code, but a treasure hunt that bends toward the Chinese Canadian audience. Think of how that would look.