Introduction
Themes
This was a Treasure hunt of two halves.
The 'Fiction' half was largely composed by Dave and covered fictional themes of The Archers, The Orange Prize (for fiction), astrology, Sherlock Holmes, and Falstaff. This false trail ran steadily westwards, from pubs in West London, to Uxbridge and then to Windsor where a 'false' treasure box was buried.
The 'Fact' half was mainly composed by Pablo, and covered more factual themes of punk rock, cinema, Jack the Ripper, astronomy, and Mary Queen of Scots. This trail ran steadily northwards, from pubs in North London to Ampthill (Bedfordshire) and finally to Fotheringay (Northamptonshire) where the 'true' box was concealed. There was a further false trail within this section, to a pub called The Globe in Leighton Buzzard - more details in the 'Astronomy' answers.
Each clue sheet in Stages 1 and 2 contained a number of 'forward references' to themes in the later stages - for example the 'Christmas Reading' clues contained a mention of a "Good Yarn" (the name of the pub to find in Uxbridge), a picture of the Sherlock Holmes pub and a question about Falstaff. What many teams missed was that there were no 'forward references' between the 'Fact' and 'Fiction' halves (unless you chose to spot some we hadn't inserted).
To start with there were four Stage 1 pubs, two in the west and two in the north of London. If you arrived at these you got four separate Stage 2 cluesheets which, however, only led to two pubs - one on the 'Fact' trail and one on the 'Fiction' trail. The reasoning was that if you failed to solve one set of clues then you might manage the other, so would not get stuck. If you arrived at the Stage 2 pubs you got the Stage 3 clues, which differed for the two trails and led to the two buried boxes.
Mistakes
As would be expected with an enterprise of this size, there were a number of mistakes and typos. And there are probably yet more in these answers. None seemed to make any difference in the end, and we have no intention of harping on about them now. Our apologies if any caused massive headaches.
Scoring
This follows the usual method of awarding each question a number of marks equal to the number of wrong, or omitted, answers from the entries received. This has the effect of giving more marks to the questions or puzzles perceived as being the most difficult. The marks awarded are shown in square brackets in each of the answer sections. If a question were answered correctly by everybody then it would score 0 - this may seem unfair but the only difference is to adjust every entry by a constant amount. In fact there were no such questions in this year's Hunt.
Obviously it is difficult to derive a 'fair' marking scheme to something as unstructured as this. For example, does a crossword count as one question? Should marks be given for decoding each of the symbols in the biography of Mary Queen of Scots? In general we have awarded a single mark for all clues relating to the finding of a pub, a mark for each of the 'forward references' spotted, a mark for each explicit question, and various others where we felt they were deserved.
Doubtless teams will find places where they failed to score for things they knew but failed to write down, and other places where they went into great detail only to get nothing for it. As Mary Queen of Scots said to the executioner - life's a bitch.
You might be amused by the Quotes from the Treasure Hunters - an unascribed selection from the various answers received.
Keen Treasure Hunters with web access might also be interested in the Armchair Treasure Hunt Club. Try one or both of these.
http://homepages.force9.net/armchair/steve.htm
http://treasure.mertec.co.uk/tathc/
you may find some of the sources of inspiration for our own competition.
Answers to Each Section