Hints And Tips For Treasure Hunters

Last modified February 10, 2014 

The following are hints to help you avoid common pitfalls at The Treasure Hunt. As I receive feedback about the site, I may update this page, so check back from time to time!
 

1. Don't assume that any page on the site is irrelevant to the puzzle solving process.
2. Don't assume you are going to solve this all at once; people who rush through it and make lots of mistakes will regret it when they get to the Final Challenge.
3. It doesn't matter whether your answers are upper case, lower case, or a mixture of cases. The answer "AlPhAbEt" would be treated the same as "Alphabet".
4. None of the answers are phrases, so if you have a space in your answer, your answer is wrong.
5. You will be pun-ished if your answer to puzzle number one doesn't involve a play on words.
6. In general, when you figure out a puzzle, you won't be thinking to yourself, "Oh, I hope that's right", you'll more likely be thinking, "Oh my goodness! I can't believe I didn't get that earlier!"
7. Yes, I do remember what day you answered that question.
8. Does the form of the word (singular, plural, past tense, present tense, etc.) matter? Read the question carefully. The form of the word will be dictated by the question. Puzzle #5 is the only puzzle for which this might be an issue. If you are in doubt about word form on any other puzzle, you're probably barking up the wrong tree.
9. Banana, Divide, Beside...these are in the form CVCVCV. But none of them is the answer. In fact, I'll save you some time by telling you that the answer to this puzzle does not appear anywhere on the site.However, I am pretty sure that everyone who has joined this Treasure Hunt has seen the answer somewhere, at some point in time.
10. Remember how I said that when you log in to the site, some of the puzzles are customized just for you? Well, you might be able to use that fact to your advantage on the lightning bug puzzle...but you have to read very carefully!
11. The text on the "Overly Verbose" page is completely useless, but that's okay, because I've told you what you need to do to the text to make it useful.
12. In the Odds And Ends Puzzle, the most important notion is that numbers can be factored in different ways. Now, what do you see that can be factored in different ways?
13. Remember that your answers are "graded" by a computer. There is no partial credit, and the computer will not guess what you "meant to say". Thus, if the answer to a question is "South Dakota", and you enter "South Dokota", the computer will not say "Oooh, you're really close." No, the computer will say "Bzzzt! Wrong answer!" In other words...CHECK YOUR SPELLING!
14. My friend Jeorge thinks that question number seven is too hard. So he has posted a hint on a website where he is the site mascot. But...in order to get to his hint, he says you'll need to solve a puzzle, and thenlook for the Treasure Hunt icon!
15. This treasure hunt was created before August 24, 2006. That may not seem like much of a hint, but it may be useful information when it comes to solving Friends at a Party!