There's been a big twist in the New England treasure hunt that captivated much of the internet, with a new golden treasure currently hiding out in the woods.
The original Project Skydrop prize was a gold statue worth more than $25,000, but it was found last week by a Boston meteorologist. But there was a secondary, and more valuable prize that went with the statue: a bounty that grew to be $87,600 along with the number of people who paid to get clues in the treasure hunt.
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That prize money was originally supposed to be paid out to the winner in Bitcoin, but the game's designers have come up with a new way to deliver it — through the new treasure hunt, which appears to be ongoing, for a pot of gold coins.
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Dan Leondard, the meteorologist who found the gold statue, apparently had first dibs on solving the puzzle by finding the statue, but the clues have now been released.
"There is now $87,600 worth of gold sitting in a secret wooded location, waiting for the the winner to find. He's got a hard puzzle to solve first, though. But the puzzle has been published to all members on our website, so the game is still afoot," the game's founders, Jason Rohrer and Tom Bailey, explained in a email to media Friday.
On the Project Skydrop website, a message teases of the gold lost in New England's woods, "WE ARE PRETTY SURE ONLY ONE MAN CAN FIGURE OUT WHERE IT IS…"
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Leonard acknowledged the new treasure hunt in a video he released this week as part of the bounty-claiming process.
"Let's figure out how to find this rainbow, get to the end of it, get that pot of gold and, uh, wrap this up," he said, also noting that he plans to use some of the winnings to give back, including to the Project Skydrop community.
Live trail cameras set up, as with the first statute, to monitor the prize have already tracked wildlife walking by the pot of gold. No one has claimed it as of late Friday night.
