Welcome to Wiki for The Secret

This is a wiki for solving the 12 puzzles contained inside The Secret, a puzzle book published in 1982 by Byron Preiss. To set up the puzzle, Preiss traveled to different locations in North America to secretly bury a dozen ceramic vases, or, as he called them, "casques." Each casque contained a small key that could be redeemed for one of 12 jewels Preiss kept in a safe deposit box in New York. The key to finding each casque was to match one of the paintings in the book to one of the verses in the book, solve the resulting riddle, and start digging. Since 1982, only two of the twelve casques have been recovered. The first was located in Grant Park, Chicago, in 1983 by a group of students. The second was unearthed in 2004 in Cleveland by two members of the Quest4Treasure forum. Preiss was killed in an auto accident in the summer of 2005, but the hunt for his casques continues.

Spring 2020 Update: Now that we're all social distancing and trying to avoid the crowds, this is a great time to get outside and take some pictures. Many of the pictures on this wiki are more than five years old and come from Google Streetview or low-resolution cameras. Let's see if we can get some current photos of all the major sites associated with the search. You can upload your pictures to the wiki or just post them on some other photo platform and send us a link. At the very least, you'll get some exercise and some fresh air, which is always a good thing. Stay healthy out there!

For more background on the book and the authors, see the history page on this wiki. If you would like to jump in and participate, visit the To Do page to see if you can help answer any of our big questions. (Other contributions are always welcome too, of course!)

The Rules - Site Summary - Tips for Puzzle Solving - Online Resources

(from page 219 in The Secret)

"The jewels collectively are worth over ten thousand dollars. The treasure casques themselves are of incalculable value, never having been owned by man or woman."

"Every treasure casque is buried underground, at a depth of no more than three to three and one-half feet. The casques are protected by lustrous transparent boxes, and are sealed."

"The following places do not hold any treasure:

(a) any life-threatening location, such as a dangerous highway embankment, a contaminated area or active railway track

(b) any cemetery

(c) any public or private flower bed

(d) any property owned by the contributors to the book, their families or friends."

A few other bits of wisdom about the treasure spots are well worth keeping in mind:

Preiss was obviously a responsible citizen and he wouldn't have wanted his treasure hunt to cause any harm or do any damage. Your solution shouldn't require you to tear up a lawn or disturb a natural area. The casques are only going to be in places that have already been disturbed by humans and where further digging wouldn't be a problem.

In every case that we know of, the burial site is beside some distinctive, man-made feature that is represented in the image or verse. (See the Solutions page for more info on the "Aha! icon.") The presence of the artificial feature within a few feet means that the casque can't be out in an open area or in some pristine natural preserve. There has to be a distinctive object (made by humans) very close to the burial spot.

Each of the 12 images in the book represents a groups of immigrants who came to North America from some foreign country. Each image is also linked to a particular month and contains that month's birth flower and that month's birth stone (which also the jewel for that casque). The text of the book includes twelve verses that describe (in varying detail) where a casque is hidden. The first step in solving the puzzle is to match up each image with the appropriate verse, month, stone, flower, and country of immigration. The table below gives the most likely connections, based on the work that has been done so far.

Only two of the 12 casques have been unearthed so far, but those experiences allow us to give some general advice to anyone who is interested in joining the hunt.

Broadly speaking, there are two types of puzzles in The Secret:

Journey Puzzles take us on a trip through some interesting area to reach a casque. These are the classic pirate treasure map routes that go winding and looping along indirect dotted lines until they lead us to the final spot. Chicago, Roanoke Island, San Francisco, Houston, Milwaukee, and Boston are all puzzles of this type.





take us on a trip through some interesting area to reach a casque. These are the classic pirate treasure map routes that go winding and looping along indirect dotted lines until they lead us to the final spot. Chicago, Roanoke Island, San Francisco, Houston, Milwaukee, and Boston are all puzzles of this type. Destination Puzzles , on the other hand, start us in the vicinity of the casque and give us a series of obscure clues to confirm the location and narrow down the spot. These puzzles may have been Preiss's way of letting people join in the hunt even if they didn't live near a spot. Many of the clues in these puzzles can only be solved by library research and obscure sources. Cleveland, Charleston, St. Augustine, New Orleans, Montreal, and New York are all puzzles of this type.

The key thing to keep in mind in solving a journey puzzle is that none of the clues after the initial starting point were meant to be interpreted by armchair enthusiasts (using 1980's tools). There would be no point in sending people on the walk if they could simply "jump ahead" by interpreting a later clue. What this means for searchers is that, after starting along the route, all of the clues are going to be for small, innocuous features that wouldn't be mentioned in any guidebook. There will be references to the number of steps in a staircase, or the name of a highway bridge, or the view across a lake, or the naming of paths in a community garden. What you won't see is any mention of a major tourist landmark that would have been on maps or brochures in 1980. The "compass" is not likely to be a well-known lighthouse. The "giant pole" is not likely to be a totem pole or other attraction. The "object of Twain's attention" is not likely to be on any list of the first hundred things one might think of after researching the life of Mark Twain. The whole point is to reward exploration and the discovery of the obscure features one can only see at "see-level."

With destination puzzles the situation is reversed. Many of the clues can only be solved by poring over obscure sources in a library. There is nothing in White Point Garden in Charleston that explains the naming of the twins Edwin and Edwina. As far as we know, there is no public monument in New Orleans that includes the quotation about the St. Charles hotel. Armchair searchers have made great progress on these puzzles, but even the internet has its limits when dealing with Preiss's convoluted way of making connections. Phrases like "natives still speak of him of Hard word in 3 Vols" requires both some serious research and a willingness to make some jumps.

Other things to keep in mind:

Study the work that has already been done. This wiki collects several decades of work on solving these puzzles. You'll get a huge head start if you take the time to understand what has already been found (and what has already been ruled out).

This wiki collects several decades of work on solving these puzzles. You'll get a huge head start if you take the time to understand what has already been found (and what has already been ruled out). Start with the puzzle and work towards a place, rather than the other way around. The images in The Secret are so abstract that they can be creatively interpreted to fit almost anyplace on earth. If you start with a preferred destination and try to make one of the images fit, you're absolutely certain to find some "matches" but you won't really be making any progress.

Keep in mind that Preiss and Palencar didn't have access to Google Maps. There are definitely many overhead views represented in these images, but they all show roads and sidewalks that would have been readily available in road maps and park brochures. If your theory relies on knowing the overhead shape of a clump of trees or some natural feature, it's not likely to be right.

Move from the famous to the obscure and from the public to the secluded. Every image in The Secret includes at least one well-known landmark. The painting for Cleveland included the Cleveland Terminal Tower. The painting for Chicago included the Chicago Water Tower. Those references are only meant to get us to the right city or the right general area. The casque in Milwaukee isn't buried at City Hall, and the one in New York isn't buried at the Statue of Liberty or Ellis Island. Start with the famous places referenced in the picture and then move from there to the hidden spots that even the locals have never noticed.

Beware of pareidolia. The human brain has a strong ability to pick out the faces in an image, but sometimes those circuits are a little overactive and we see faces in clouds and other random shapes. There may be "secret faces" hidden in some of the images of The Secret, but those faces may also be just our own imaginations.

Similarly, beware of apophenia. The human brain also has a tendency to see patterns in what are actually just random data. The artist who painted the images for The Secret was very clever about throwing in random brushstrokes. Sometimes they mean something and sometimes they don't.

Use your common sense. Preiss wasn't expecting you to dig through some nice lawn in the middle of a park or an athletic field. He dug his holes in bare or weedy areas where the soil was already loose and where he was protected from view by trees and walls. If your solution sends you to a well-maintained or heavily-trafficked area, it's almost certainly wrong. You shouldn't need to cut through grass (or any other plant roots) to get to the casque and you shouldn't need to be in a very public spot.

Don't mess things up for other searchers. Unearthing the remaining casques will very likely require getting cooperation and permissions from various public and private landowners. If you damage an area or leave holes for other people to fill, you'll only be giving the whole hunt a bad name. So - please - be responsible, do no harm, get permission first if possible, and be sure to clean up your mess!

Have fun!

More theories and discussions about the search are available at:

* The three sites at the start of the list all attempted to solve The Secret using discussions and all ran into the same problem. By posting new theories and new discoveries in a single, ever-lengthening thread, each forum created such a backlog of unorganized material that it was impossible for anyone to keep track of what had already been found. The thread at Something Awful, for example, started on May 31, 2013 and in less than a week had more than 1,200 entries. That thread now has more than 5,700 entries, making it very difficult for new people to join the search and get caught up. The goal of this wiki is to present all of the discoveries in an organized way, so that searchers can quickly and easily see what is already known about each image and each verse.

There are many photo albums on Flickr and PhotoBucket where people have posted images relevant to The Secret. Some of the better ones are:

Important: As of early 2019, Flickr is planning to change their terms of service. Free accounts will now be limited to only 1,000 photos, which means that many relevant photos from the albums listed above (and others) will soon be going away. Searchers may want to download copies of the most useful photos now, so that they aren't lost forever.

Some of the useful websites for doing research include:

Downloads:

In the Files Section - A pdf template for a plexiglas casque container.

Progress Map

Click on the map to see an enlargement. For more maps related to the casque locations in The Secret, go to the Maps Page.



All of the hunt locations so far involve waterfront cities and, in many cases, waterfront parks. Possibly it is coincidence or possibly there is a water-related theme that no one has fully explained yet. (Thanks to Austin for the updated map!)

Wiki Update (2/18/18)

It's been a month since the Travel Channel show aired on January 17th and thing are finally getting back to normal around here. Page views on the site are back down to under 10,000/day and hopefully property owners are feeling less besieged by requests to dig. But we've made some amazing progress over the past month and we've had some great contributions from new people who have joined the wiki and have quickly gotten up to speed. So to mark this anniversary of the "big surge," I'd like to recognize a few of our contributors who have really moved the search forwards. Here's my own personal assessment of the Top 10 Recent Discoveries on The Secret!



10) The concrete slab under the Moultrie monument in Charleston.

Wiki user Chris Andrews did some careful investigations in Charleston and documented that a concrete slab was installed below ground level when the Maine monument was removed (which is great to know but probably ends all chances of recovering the casque for Image 2).



9) Sash-hattan

Wiki user Drumman spotted the shape of Manhattan that was staring us right in the face, hidden in plain view in Image 12.



8) A tree grows in New York Harbor.

Amazingly, there is also a large and fairly clear tree trunk hidden (sideways) in Image 12, but no one spotted it until wiki user Pizzoli pointed it out.



7) "Dryades Street and Cours de Naides (now St Charles Avenue) in New Orleans were named after wood and water sprites respectively."

We don’t get a lot of new input related to the verses, but wiki user Jess made a potentially big discovery related to Verse 2.



6) Watch out for the alligator!

We knew that Image 6 had lots of clues for Florida, but wiki user Halla4 was apparently the first person to point out that there is a very clear alligator lurking along the edge of the big stone.



5) It’s not a scythe - it’s Albemarle Sound!

People have struggled for years to understand the weird objects on the right arm of the knight in Image 3, but it took wiki user Drumman to point out that they form the shape of the North Carolina coastline.



4) That old pine tree? It’s still there.

This wiki had a solution for Image 6 that required a large pine tree in a certain place, but we didn’t realize that the pine was still there until wiki users Marvin Calhoun, Zteam, and Andy Hafler nailed down the evidence.



3) Even more amazing? Palencar painted a picture of the spot with the pine tree.

This wiki has always promoted the idea that each image includes an “Aha Moment” of recognition at the burial spot, but it took wiki user Kang to point out the hidden depiction of the FOY hiding spot in Image 6.



2) Those blocks by the park are… blocks by the park.

People have almost certainly pointed it out before over the years, but it it didn’t really register until wiki user Kimberley posted about it: The squares on either side of the Golden Gate Park map in Image 1 are city blocks and the fingers are pointing at streets.



1) If the dragon head is on the left, the map is flipped from left-to-right

The single biggest discovery was the observation by wiki user Goonie68 that the head of the dragon in Image 1 matches the dragon above the entrance to the Golden Gate Park Senior Center. For years now people have been saying that the backwards “Gh” at the top of the map must mean that the map itself is flipped, and the response has always been to point out that the “flare” in the bottom right corner where Fulton bends is in the right place. But if there are only two objects above the crossed arms, and both of them are shown in a way that clearly indicates a flip, then it seems very clear that we are meant to flip the upper half of the image from left to right. And that's what makes the solution finally clear.





Thanks to everyone for these and all the other insights on the wiki over the past month. I've tried to give credit where it's due in the above list, but if I got anything wrong, please let me know and I'll try to set it right. Keep up the good work!

- Oregonian (wiki administrator)

Interested in Contributing to this Wiki?

Careful and substantive contributions are always welcome! Your contributions can explain a theory, but you should avoid lecturing the readers or putting down other approaches. Be sure your contributions are always professional, courteous, and helpful to the search. And, of course, remember that what you add may end up getting changed or removed by another wiki editor. That's how the wiki process works.

If you want to add to this wiki, but you aren't sure where to start, please check our To Do List.

If you want to add to this wiki, but you're nervous about using the wiki editing system, feel free to play around and experiment in the sandbox page.

If you're contacting the wiki administrator about access or other issues, be sure to add "pbworks.com" and "gmx.com" to the safe list in your email program, so responses don't end up in your spam folder.