A Puzzling Peek at What’s to come in The Tompkins Treasure Hunt
We’re just over a month away from the second annual Tompkins Treasure Hunt and that means the History Center team is knee deep in puzzles, maps, and reciepts. While the this year’s adventure is still top-secret until September 12, the returning puzzle writer, David Wilson, has shared a puzzle for those wanting a sneak-peek for what’s to come.
Get a feel for the difficulty level of the puzzles - this challenge is worth the prize! While the first registered treasure hunter to complete the adventure wins $10,000 in jewels from The Jewelbox, every team can take up to the full month of September to solve the mystery. The most successful teams last year were ecclectic and wide-reaching groups with a little familiarity with the puzzling world (they knew their way around those NYT games, for sure). We’re reccomending groups of 4-7, but the more the merrier.
Let’s get to it - the premise of the puzzles is that you are trying to solve for a location and a password. During the hunt, teams race to the locations to scan a QR code, input the password, and reveal the next puzzle. For this example ,there is no QR code at the location, just the satisfaction of finding the solution.
The Puzzle
Now - we’ll walk you through how to get to the solution, but if you want to skip right to the answer, head to the bottom of the post.
The very first step is to read. It seems we’ve been presented with a set-list, complete with artist names and run times. We also have a clarifier for later, “The password is the name of the artist.” It’s time to start shaking information out of this puzzle! A quick Google search reveals “Attics of My Life” is a Greatful Dead song. Another Google search shows that “Birdsong” and “New Minglewood Blues” are as well. Make your way down the list, they are all Greatful Dead songs! We’ve recovered the first peice of hidden information in this puzzle - all of the songs listed belong to the Greatful Dead.
The second step is to think local. Remember, this is a fundraiser for a county history museum, and we love local history. Now, if you are familiar with Tompkins County culture and lore, you might remember that the Greatful Dead played a legendary concert right at Cornell, on May 8, 1977. If you aren’t familiar, that’s ok, it comes right up when we Google “Greatful Dead Ithaca.”
The next step is to let your wheels spin. *A note from this puzzler- every person’s speed bumps are different, mine is right here at the beginning. I took the opportunity to read up on the famous concert, absorb a little information about how Deadhead culture visited and shaped Ithaca, before finally returning to the puzzle itself - a set-list. This is where I discovered the set-list in the puzzle is different than that of the 1977 concert. A lead! We’re ready to go onto the next step, but it was fun to muddle here in history for a moment.
Now it’s time to organize the information. There are six songs in the puzzle that are not in the original set-list. We haven’t used the run-time information yet - let’s try organizing the extra six songs by length. Then - add up the run times of the addtional songs in hours/minutes form. Here is what that looks like:
Here is what we’re left with… ARTSDB 30:27. Let’s mix and match our peices of information to find that Cornell (the site of the concert) and ARTSDB are linked together through their digital library. The letters are a part of the catalog ID, and the rest of the catalog ID is typically four numbers. Looking up the complete ID, ARTSDB_3027 we find Herakles at Ithaka, the welded-steel sculpture on the Cornell campus (digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/ss:747164).
So who was the artist? Jason Seley, a sculpture Professor at Cornell. Now we have both answers to the puzzle.
If that walkthrough left you itching to try the real thing, you're exactly who we built this hunt for. It's the same blend of local history, a little research, and that satisfying click when the pieces finally line up — except this September, the puzzles are new, the locations span the county, and the prize is real jewels. You don't need to be a trivia champion or a Grateful Dead scholar to make it to the end; you just need curiosity, a team you like spending time with, and a willingness to follow a lead down a rabbit hole or two. Registration for the second annual Tompkins Treasure Hunt is open now at tompkinstreasure.com — gather your crew, mark your calendar for September 12, and get ready to see Tompkins County in a whole new way.
