A new puzzle game has been launched to promote the upcoming sequel to Batman Begins, The Dark Knight.  The puzzle begins at a site called whysoserious.com and it seems to involve finding and photographing actual locations around the country.  Enjoy!

The Golden Jigsaw is a puzzle competition that starts at 12 noon today.  The competition requires you to find 1,000 jigsaw puzzle pieces scattered around the web and assemble them.  The first to find and assemble all of the pieces will win $1,000,000.

Most of the pieces are, of course, located on the sites of paying advertisers, as this is how the prize money gets paid.  The final ten pieces will be located on charity websites.

Here’s a quick update on Volvo’s treasure hunt.  Apparently, the final puzzle was so hard that none of the finalists were able to solve it and the treasure remains unfound.  There will be a rematch today with a new puzzle to see if a winner can be found.  The final puzzles will be posted The Hunt web site, when the treasure is found.

Last year, in connection with the release of Pirates of the Carribean: Dean Man’s Chest, Vovlo buried one of their cars and set up a series of puzzle games for contestants to play.

This year, in connection with the release of Pirates of the Carribean: World’s End, Volvo has dumped a chest full of gold (and a set of car keys) in the ocean for a lucky contestant to find. There will be online puzzle games again. And, of course, a quest to your local Volvo dealer will be a requirement, just like last time.

The contest begins next week, but the sign up page is already live.

I’ve read about the new puzzle, Isis, in a number of places now, most notably Passion for Puzzles and Top Gadgets. It’s hard to tell from descriptions what the puzzle is, but it seems to be some kind of ball with hieroglyphics on it. The goal is to open the ball which presumably happens when the hieroglyphics are properly alligned.

Inside Isis is a key to one of several pyramids hidden in the UK containing about £1000 worth of Gold and Silver coins. Of course, Isis itself will run you about £100. We’re told that this is the first of many puzzles that will lead to a final prize worth five figures.

I recently came across this press release about an upcoming indie film called GPS and a game that goes along with it.  The film seems to be truly independant, in the sense that there will likely be no one you’ve heard of involved with making it.  It’s being billed as a suspense thriller about people who us GPS trackers to find treasure.

The game allows you to get involved.  There’s some treasure hunting involved, but there are also online puzzles and what seems like an ARG-style mystery involving the characters in the film.

I recently came across a blog post called “A Great New Search Engine for Puzzle and Riddle Lovers” which led me to a site called Trumalia.  It took me a little while to figure out what Trumalia is.  First, it’s a search engine like any other search engine.  It doesn’t focus on puzzles or riddles; it just searches the web.  Second, it’s a place to promote contemporary art.

It’s also a treasure hunt.

If you click on the eye on the Trumalia page, three search terms appear.  Clicking on each term returns a list of pages containing that term but, if you look carefully at pages 2-4, you’ll see that one of the pages is a riddle.  Solve the riddle and a new search term is given to you.  Eventually you will be presented with an image containing a secret code.  Combine that code with the code from other images and you’ll find buried treasure.

There are four riddle series and one has already been cracked.  Happy hunting!

I blogged back in March about a book for armchair treasure hunters called Secrets of the Alchemist Dar by Michael Stadther. The book is a follow-up to Stadther’s A Treasure Trove that contained clues to find coins hidden in US state parks redeemable for $1 million of jewels. The new book will lead treasure hunters to $2 million worth of jewels. (We’re told anyone in the world can participate, but it’s unclear what, exactly, that means.)

Secrets of the Alchemist Dar will be released Sept. 26th, but Amazon.com is sponsoring a preliminary treasure hunt to promote the book. Starting today, Amazon.com will be placing 1 clue per week for 9 weeks on its web site. Solving each clue will unlock a piece of a 9-piece puzzle. The first person to solve the puzzle will win a ring worth 10,000. To enter the contest, visit the page for Secrets of the Alchemist Dar. From there, you will find a link to the puzzle and a list of sites where you can find the clues.

So far, it seems like the clues might be really lame. The first can be found on the Amazon.com Jewelry and Watches page and asks you to identify: Number of mouse-clicks to complete 1-click purchase for 1-click eligible items. (You’ll get no help from me on that one.) It remains to be seen if any future clues or the final puzzle pose any real mental challenge.

To promote the upcoming film Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest, Volvo is having a treasure hunt competition called “The Hunt.” The goal: find a Volvo XC90 V8 buried somewhere in the world. Oh, but this is not just any Volvo XC90, from the press release:

The buried one-of-a-kind, pirate-themed Volvo XC90 features a variety of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest-inspired elements, including menacing graphics from the film, black leather seats, custom painted 20 inch wheels and more.

The contest begins next Monday and will require a map available from Volvo dealers. There will then bea series of online puzzles to solve leading to the car.

Update: For anyone interested in seeing what this car looks like, visit this site.

The idea of entertainment that requires players to interact with the real world seems to be catching on. Scroll Quest, a Washington, DC company, is taking a crack at it and offering $225,000 in treasure. Scroll Quest tells the story of Algernon Emmery Ambrose, a wealthy collector of artifacts. When Ambrose died, his will stipulated that his collection be left to “the best of humanity.”

And so, every month a scroll is released that contains a story and hidden clues to find a coin that can be redeemed for one of Ambrose’s artifacts.

Scroll Quest makes their money by selling the scrolls which go for about $5 each. Supposedly the coins are accessible to anyone, but I’m guessing it helps if the coin is hidden somewhere near where you live.

It will be interesting to see if these kinds of treasure hunts and alternate reality games will be successful in the long run.

Found through the Huffington Post: A book called Secrets of the Alchemist Dar by Michael Stadther will be released. The book will contain clues that lead to $1.5 million in jewels hidden around the world. Apparently, Michael Stadther released a similar book in 2004 after hiding gold coins in state parks around the US. He made at least one starving grad student a rich man. There seem to be hints that the upcoming challenge may not even require you to travel to state parks as Stadther makes some cryptic comments about finding “the power of the internet.” Maybe you’ll be able to order the jewels from Amazon and have them shipped to your house.

I’ve been reading up about the puzzle game called Perplex City, which was blogged about on boingboing (here and here) and Shiny Shiny.
At its heart, the game involves solving puzzles but, in execution, it draws from the following genres:

1. Collectible card games - of which Magic is the best example. To play Perplex City, you buy packs of 6 cards that have puzzles on them. Each card has an individual puzzle and the cards can be combined to form other puzzles. Some of the cards are harder to find than others and, presumably, you will have to collect all of the cards to win.
2. Alternate reality games - like the ones used in the marketing for the movie A.I. or the game Halo 2. These games involve clues that are hidden in the real world. Characters that you can contact and that will contact you back. And fictitious web sites that look like they’re set up by real people.
3. A treasure hunt - with an object hidden in the real world that you have to find.

The winner gets $200,000, which will certainly be incentive for many to play. Of course, you’re likely to sink a lot of time and money into the game in order to even have a shot at winning.