Armchair Treasure Hunt 1992
| Title: | Armchair Treasure Hunt 1992 |
| Setters: | Paul Coombs & Brian Jackson |
| Themes: | Sets of Objects |
Some Notes on the Hunt
Paul Coombs writes...
Rod Fine and Steve Hames both having had their turn in the ATH limelight, the burden once more fell on me in 1992. Determined as usual to find a twist, I decided that this one would have no questions. Instead, there would just be a giant picture of "sets of things with one thing missing". The difficulty would be intensified by the need to determine which object belonged to which set. Brian and I amused ourselves for some time in drawing up lists of possible sets with common items.
It must be said that Brian did everything else. After he had produced some rather half-hearted sketches, I was becoming concerned that the whole task might prove too difficult and we would be back into the 1987 situation. But to my amazement he appeared one day with the whole thing completed, including the rather cool woodgraining effect and "toroidially toroidal" jigsaw puzzle, plus lots of new "sets" that we had not even discussed. The availability of clipart and desktop publishing put a stop to such hand-crafted artwork for the ATH, but this was a fitting end.
I was disappointed that only one team really entered into the spirit of things by trying to draw what the missing page of the hunt would look like (with all the missing elements of each set of objects). The actual 'buried treasure' part was rather tacked on, but was made particularly hard by the mass of irrelevant information.
Brian Jackson writes...
I think I would like a co-creator credit on this one! Things like the 1888 Double Florin and the Deep Purple albums were definitely my idea, and as to 'half-hearted' sketches.... I refer you back to previous comments about artist/writer misunderstandings (and also refer Pablo to the dictionary definition of 'sketch'). However, to be fair to him, I probably got the most freedom from Pablo here compared to any of the projects we worked on (CAT Hunts and others), so this one has it's share of in-jokes e.g. the iron states 'Made In Japan' which was the answer to the Deep Purple question. I even let Pablo know about a few he had missed (after it was published).
'Objects' has to be my favourite CAT Hunt, particularly as I recall copies of Noticeboard being torn apart as soon as they arrived (there was something strangely satisfying about that) and watching grown consultants squabbling like ten year olds with a new christmas jigsaw about who had put which page in the wrong place.... To their credit, the printers did an excellent job with this one, as did our contact in Corporate Relations, who pushed out the boat (and the budget) to ensure the hunt was included and to the print quality achieved. The artist was finally happy, and I think the writer was too.