Crumplings Workshop

Under tonight’s Snow Moon, a treasure hunt begins!

I recently decided to start exploring a concept I’ve loved since forever: old-timey treasure maps involving puzzles and riddles.

A treasure hunt wouldn’t be a treasure hunt without a prize, so I made the Snow Moon elephant above for the purposes of this project – it will be shipped to the first person who, with the aid of the treasure map below, solves all eight puzzles you’ll find in a list underneath it. (Though see full rules for time zone adjustments in case the game is solved quickly!)

So far this game, experimental though it is, has been incredibly fun to work on, and I’m beyond excited to see how it goes. ^__^ I hope to keep making similar games as little art projects every now and then, and if a few virtual games eventually garner enough interest, probably create some real-life treasure hunts as well. I’ll be aiming to keep the games free of charge, so might set up a Patreon page if this experiment goes well and I start working on more polished puzzles (though most of my work will still be sculptures, so have no fear if you’re mostly here for them).

Without further ado, here is the treasure map!
Full size (you’ll probably need it…): click on the image, then find the (i) button near the bottom of the page, which allows you to see the image in its original size.

And the questions are as follows:

1. A series of numbers
2. A plant
3. What is a name for the circus?
4. What is a name for the island it is on?
5. An animal
6. What do you see in the lake?
7. A mood
8. Where did you end up?

You can click a link to check your answer, as instructed in the rules below.

Full rules and other helpful tips:

1. The Snow Moon Elephant will be given to the first person to solve all 8 puzzles in the game, and send the solutions to crumplings.workshop@crumplings.co.uk. However, if several contestants solve all puzzles during the first 48 hours, a winner will be chosen randomly from the successful group of contestants. This is just to mitigate unfairness from time zone differences. 

2. When sending me your solutions, let me know which name or nickname I should use to communicate on social media about the winner. Just make sure you use an email you’ll have access to, so that I can get your shipping details if you win!

3. The solutions can be sent either all at once, or in smaller groups or one by one as you solve them (I recommend sending them as you go in case there’s any need to clarify some of the solutions – just use the same email or otherwise identify yourself so that I can connect all answers to the same person).

4. You can check your answers by entering them as passwords on the protected pages linked in the question list before sending your responses to me. If the answer is correct, you will get access to a page that tells you it is indeed correct. If you don’t get access, it might not be the right solution. (When checking, use all lower case and no special characters or spaces. A correct solution can in a couple cases be phrased differently, though this is pretty unlikely as the passwords are simple. You can try some neighboring expressions if you don’t get through, and feel free to contact me using the email above if you’re confident in your answer but suspect you just can’t think of the right way to phrase it!)

5. To prevent random guessing with the checker pages, a full solution to a puzzle also requires an explanation of how you arrived at your conclusion. When sending me your solutions, make sure you write out each necessary step if there are several, or otherwise describe your thinking if the answer is simpler. If there is ambiguity in the answer that could leave open the possibility of guesswork, I’ll ask for a clarification, and the timestamp of an unambiguous clarification counts as your actual solution time. So try to be as clear as possible in your initial response!

In the unlikely case that a puzzle happens to have some completely different path to a correct solution, I will likely require the intended reasoning path as well unless the novel path is equally or more intuitive. (This will sadly have to be decided on a case-by-case basis; as far as I can tell, some minor parts of one or two puzzles might be solvable in a couple different but equally intuitive ways, but for the most part there should be just one way to get to the right answer.)

6. If the treasure hunt goes unsolved for weeks or months, I may publish occasional hints through my Bluesky account, this blog, or other social media. However, all of these will be shared on my Bluesky as well, so you don’t need to follow me everywhere. Hints will likely not be dropped about puzzles that I know someone has already solved (since they’ve proven sufficiently solvable). In addition to hints I may post about how the game is going, how much interest there has been, which puzzles seem harder than others, and other possibly interesting updates. 

7. I’ve tried to make the puzzles intuitive and logical – I don’t want to discuss their structure too much, but as mentioned above, some of them may have several steps while some are simpler, and some may require more research (are perhaps not fully located on the map…). They are all solvable using the information provided here and access to internet, of course.

8. I doubt anyone would resort to unsportsmanlike behavior in a game like this, but I reserve the right to ban contestants for behavior that, judged commonsensically, isn’t in the spirit of the game (for instance, spamming me with dozens of solution attempts that clearly aren’t serious, or trying to fish for information other contestants have, or other more creative ideas!).

Good luck, and hope to hear from some of you soon ❤