As you might imagine, it’s quite fun to be the Chief Adventure Officer at Brain Chase. One of the perks is watching all of the writing journals, artistic masterpieces, and feats of engineering pour in (honestly, parents – this is equally adorable and inspiring). Another perk is seeing Mae Merriweather’s animations come together frame-by-frame. But my favorite part of the job is overseeing the treasure hunt. As a security measure, the actual coordinates of the treasure’s location aren’t stored anywhere online. In fact, none of our animators, web developers, team members, or family members know where it is.

That means the treasure hunt is mine, all mine. Here’s how I do it.

By now you’re familiar with the map page – you get to drop a pin on a world map once every 24 hours, and the first participant to guess the location within a two-mile radius wins. As you submit guesses, your pins accumulate on your private map page. But on our end, we can see the whole picture – every guess any of you have made during the entire chase. Here’s what it looked like at one point in an earlier season:

As you can see, there are certain areas that get more guesses than others. Zooming in, we can see the map in much more detail – making it fairly easy to tell when we have a winner. The guesses are also stamped with participant name and exact time of guess, making it crystal clear who the winner is. I can also search the guesses based on proximity to the actual coordinates, like this:

In the unlikely event that two guesses occur within a two-mile radius of the treasure at the exact same millisecond, the guess that is closest to the actual burial site will win. But remember, the individual who submitted the winning guess must also complete the entire learning challenge. If you’re competing as a team, the entire team must finish the program, or no treasure.

See why this is so fun for me? As the guesses pour in each day, I can sense trends and strategies, see who’s picking up on different clues, and observe different thought processes. I’m proud to say that we’ve got a very sharp bunch of participants this spring. I won’t say just yet whether the location has been successfully identified, but I will say this: as a group, you’re getting warmer. So stick with the chase and keep the guesses coming. We’ll be watching.

 

Good luck, adventurers!

Allan

Dad and Co-founder