As you read this article, countless numbers of people are scouring the United States for 12 hidden tokens that could each be worth a small fortune. But those hunters trying to find the loot are likely finding themselves at a significant disadvantage to those who are teaming up online.
The tokens are the booty in a national treasure hunt whose clues are written into the storyline of Michael Stadther's hugely popular children's book, A Treasure's Trove. Each token is redeemable for a valuable gem, and together the gems' value is estimated at more than a million dollars.
And that's why thousands of people have flocked to websites devoted to the treasure hunt, where they can participate in chat rooms, post questions or responses on forums and together try to track down A Treasure Trove's bounty.
"People love to be a part of something, especially something as exciting and big as this national hunt is turning out to be," said Peck, the administrator of 12gems.com, a site devoted to the search for Stadther's treasure. "Not everyone has the ability to physically participate in such a demanding nationwide search, but the book and the internet very easily allow them from almost anywhere in the world to mentally connect to this idea, to this excitement, and be a real part of the adventure and hype surrounding it."
A lot of these people are clearly hoping that the past success of collaborative puzzle-solving websites will repeat itself with this treasure hunt.
In 2003, thousands played the immersive adventure TerraQuest, which offered $25,000 to the first person who could solve an intricate mystery.
"It was supposed to take four months to solve the puzzle," said Holly Samee, a co-founder of Collective Detective, a site that invited anyone to organize collective efforts to solve games like TerraQuest. The site's members "solved it in three days."
Other Collective Detective members won prizes of as much as $10,000 in games like Aspen Treasure Hunt, a Flash-based "advergame" promoting cologne, and Cybertrek, which challenged players to solve a programming-language problem.
And while contests like these can be and often are won by players working on their own, people who take part on websites like Collective Detective, 12gems.com and others have a significant leg up on their solo competitors because of the sheer brainpower they can throw at a problem, not to mention the ability to bounce ideas and potential solutions off each other.
"It's the ocular effect," said Tom Arriola, the developer of Crime Scene, a website that tasks its thousands of members with collectively solving fictional murder mysteries. "The more eyeballs that see it, the more likely it is that someone will see something that no one saw before."
According to Christopher Landauer, an administrator of Tweleve, another site devoted to finding A Treasure Trove's tokens, its members took only five hours to solve the first clue Stadther published that wasn't in the book.
"Mr. Stadther said in an interview that our solution was correct," said Landauer. "I doubt he would have confirmed the solution so quickly if there weren't 3,000 people talking all about it on our forum. I also doubt that it would have been solved so quickly, as there are compelling alternate solutions."
Stadther could not be reached for comment.
One might wonder if it is fair for members of these community sites to compete head to head with individuals doing all the hunting themselves. To those who participate in such sites, the answer is clear.
"I'm not sure this is the way Mr. Stadther imagined the hunt (would) go, but it is apparently how it (is going)," said Cathy, a moderator of Tweleve. "I think, whether it's considered fair or not, it is the way the world works today."
Jeffrey Langenkamp, a habitué of 12gems.com, thinks working together with others to try to solve a puzzle, especially one with financial rewards, has its downsides as well.
"There's a shared risk," Langenkamp said. "Maybe you team up with a person that takes your clues, finds the token and doesn't give you your share.... If you work alone, you get the full prize."
Not every participant on these sites behaves with the same group interest. In fact, many exploit the generosity and intellectual creativity of the harder-working members.
According to a posting on Tweleve by Mark Perry, the administrator of Quest4treasure, a British treasure-hunting community site, online hunters fall into three categories: givers, who share everything they find; takers, who lurk until they see valuable information they can steal; and players, "who give everything they half understand in the hope that a giver will finish it off for them."
In any case, whether such sites are fair to everyone involved isn't really the point. Rather, it's about creating environments that harness the collective brainpower of thousands of participants into giant problem-solving machines.
"It's like the networking of human brains," said Arriola. "One computer can solve a problem slowly, and a thousand computers networked together can solve it instantly."
