PhreakNIC 26 Treasure Hunt – Writeup

Building the Master Map

Each clue came with a Base Map showing a grid of the hotel grounds. Our strategy was to treat every clue as a way to cross out impossible locations until only a few remained.

1. For every challenge, we started with its Base Map and blacked out the grid squares indicated by that clue.
2. Reps4Thor imported each map as a layer into Photoshop, stacking them all into a single composite file.
3. Once all unlocked clues were layered, we were left with only 4 visible (unblocked) grid squares out of the original 1,575.

To make those stand out visually, we inverted the selection so that only the remaining squares were highlighted. From there, we used the hint that the treasure was buried in a leafy/wooded area. One of the four candidate grid squares clearly had more trees than the others, so that became our first target.

Result: that was the correct square.

Clue 1 – Sudoku

The first clue was a standard-looking Sudoku puzzle. We were never completely sure we interpreted this one exactly as intended, but our working assumption ended up fitting the overall structure of the hunt.

Our interpretation: any square with a number in it should be blacked out on the grid. It felt almost too simple, which meant we overthought it multiple times during the night, looking for some deeper twist or hidden encoding.

In the end, the “black out numbered cells” approach slotted cleanly into the rest of the puzzle and worked with the following clues.

Clue 1 – Sudoku - Update

During the proofreading phase of the writeup we sent a copy over to the Event Organizer (crook3dfingers) and we discovered that the text for this clue was accidentally left out. "It was supposed to say it is buried under a square numbered greater than 5. It was buried under an 8 square, and that would have cut the map nearly in half."

Clue 2 – Dots (Braille)

Clue 2 was a grid of dots. Reps4Thor quickly recognized the pattern as Braille.

Our workflow for this clue:

• Treat each cluster of dots as a Braille character aligned with the map grid.
• Instead of hunting for a special online overlay tool, Reps4Thor simply manually recreated the Braille pattern on a new Photoshop layer.
• Once decoded, the clue gave us another set of grid squares to black out from the master map.

Clue 3 – Art (Ice Machine Posters)

Clue 3 was labeled “Art”, and I was fairly sure it referred to the images posted near the ice machines on each floor of the hotel.

The hotel had four floors, and the clue ordering seemed to be from top to bottom. The smart route would have been:

• Take the elevator to the top floor.
• Walk down the stairs, stopping at each floor to grab the image.

Instead, we did it the hard way: up the stairs, down the elevator, repeating for each floor. On every floor, next to the ice machine, there was a picture with a partial image of the grid.

Thanks to the legendary Clarion lighting, getting good photos was harder than it should have been. After snapping all four:

• I isolated the blacked-out squares from each floor’s picture and reconstructed them into a clean composite layer for the main map.
• Meanwhile, Reps4Thor continued working on the Dots/Braille clue.

This clue knocked out another sizable chunk of grid squares.

• Click Here to view Art Piece One
• Click Here to view Art Piece Two
• Click Here to view Art Piece Three
• Click Here to view Art Piece Four


• Click Here to view our Solved version

Clue 4 – Word Search

Clue 4 was a huge word search with 73 words. We briefly considered solving it by hand, then remembered that automation exists.

Our approach:

• Load the puzzle into a word-search solver.
• Have the solver mark all the words and generate a clean result.
• Convert those marked positions into a new set of grid coordinates to black out.

Cheating? We’re calling it “thinking smarter, not harder.” The logic still mattered; we just let tools handle the tedious part.

Clue 5 – No Book (FOTTR Cards)

Clue 5, titled “No Book”, revolved around a set of cards. We started out with the physical cards laid out, working through them in person.

Then we remembered that FOTTR had released an image dump of all the cards. Using that digital version made it much easier to scan, zoom, and double-check details.

We split the work like this:

• I solved from the bottom up through the card list.
• Reps4Thor solved from the top down.
• We met in the middle and compared notes to make sure everything lined up.

The result was a large number of squares we could confidently black out, wiping out a big section of the remaining map.

Clue 6 – The Photo

Clue 6 dropped at the same time as Clue 5. It was simply a photo of the flag buried in a wooded/leafy area.

First instinct: check the EXIF metadata to see if any GPS coordinates were left behind by accident.

Nope. GPS was stripped. No free coordinates this time.

Even without metadata, the photo was still valuable: it gave us a visual reference for the kind of environment we should be expecting once we narrowed the map down to just a few squares.

Clue 7 – The Songs

Clue 7 was released at 11:00 PM and served as the final push (unless nobody managed to find the treasure).

The clue consisted of seven songs. We tackled it like this:

1. Use Shazam to quickly identify each track.
2. Drop the list of songs into ChatGPT and have it sort them by release date, giving us a definite ordering.
3. We took the oldest Song Name, which was a color, which back to specific grid squares on the master map. We blacked out all the other 6 colors.

After applying the Clue 7 mapping, we were left with just four grid squares. We cross-referenced those with the “leafy area” visual from Clue 6 and chose the square that clearly had the densest tree coverage. Click Here to see the map of the Final 4 locations highlighted

We headed there immediately.

At 11:21 PM, we found the treasure.

Closing Thoughts

The Treasure Hunt was a great mix of classic puzzles, physical scavenger-hunting, and some well-chosen tools:

• Paper-style puzzles (Sudoku, word search, Braille).
• Physical exploration (ice machine art, wandering around the grounds, hunting for leafy corners).
• Digital helpers (Photoshop, word-search solver, Shazam, ChatGPT).

We didn’t brute-force anything on-site; we just leaned into automation to handle the repetitive bits and focused our attention on the logic and connections between clues.

In the end, a carefully layered map, a leafy patch of ground, and some solid teamwork were what got us there first.

For future organizers: more trees are good. The Clarion lighting, however, will not be missed.