jdyer
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 329
Registered: 03-19-2003
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Back in 1981 (while the famous treasure hunt Masquerade was still running) a company called Level-10 came out with a puzzle contest of their own, with clues to an "Alkemstone" buried somewhere in the world. They put the clues in an Apple II game. The prize for winning was $5000 (later upped to $7500) but the company is long defunct.

However, the person responsible for awarding the prize is still alive and says nobody claimed the prize and as far as he knows the physical treasure is still buried out there.

I've been working through the clues on my blog with my commenters.

https://bluerenga.blog/tag/alkemstone/?order=ASC

Anyone is welcome to join in! There's also an interactive map showing where all the clues are in the game.

TripleM
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1373
Registered: 02-05-2003
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I'm definitely intrigued. Though I really feel in need of a more organised way of discussing the clues - tricky to pick one then go back and forth over the 5 posts trying to see what others have discussed about it!

What intrigues me most is the fact you seem to be the only person online discussing it - normally these types of things have been discussed to death and everything you can think of, someone else already has. Quite exciting

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[Last edited by TripleM at 03-04-2020 09:34 AM]

jdyer
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 329
Registered: 03-19-2003
IP: Logged

I do think we're hitting the threshold where a wiki may be handy, but I haven't kept up with them lately, keeping up with my blog is hard enough (are the free sites bonkers? is there an easy way to host a personal wiki without having to rely on one of those?)

I'm also not sure how I'd organize it. What I really would want to do is rearrange the clues like pieces of paper and let people attach notes and sort relationships. (At least some of the clues need to "go together" in order to make sense, so it'd be odd having an individual wiki page for each clue.)

It was a little surprising to me nobody had pulled Alkemstone apart yet, but the game is genuinely obscure and the process of mapping was very tedious even given modern emulator features.