Reading Between the Lines

UC Berkeley student Jason Davis spent five months decoding the patterns of acorns in a fairy-tale children's book, and it paid off. On June 2, he used clues in the book to find a gold token worth $280,000 in a nationwide treasure hunt.

Davis, a cognitive science major, found the treasure in the knot of a tree in a Foss Lake, Okla. campsite by analyzing illustrated clues in the best-seller, "A Treasure's Trove" by Michael Stadther. The book holds clues for finding 12 different treasure tokens hidden throughout the country, each redeemable for a jewel. Davis's find was the second-most valuable.

"It was very dreamlike. I thought I was trippin' on something," Davis says about the scene of his discovery, which was complete with fireflies and the "straight-up hillbillies" who shared his campsite in Foss Lake.

Davis' discovery concluded a rough, two-day bus ride, funded by a friend, and a 10-mile walking and hitchhiking journey in the heat from Elk City, Okla. to the campsite.

Upon reaching the campsite, however, it only took him five minutes to find the token in the tree. "I literally rolled on the ground, in the dirt ... And I laughed, just laughed for about a half-hour straight," Davis says.

Although he found the token weeks ago, Davis still marvels at his good fortune. In the days after he solved the acorn pattern, he desperately searched for money to travel to the campsite, knowing full well of his odds.

"Someone else is going to solve this. It's not rocket science. It's just a matter of time," Davis says he told a friend who loaned him $320 for the trip.

The book has sold half a million copies, and there are Web sites devoted to the progress of the treasure hunt. Davis estimates that at least 5,000 people were trying to solve the same set of clues that he decoded.

Three tokens have not yet been found-including the top prize-and another clue in the book reveals that there is also a 13th jewel.

Since the clues' level of difficulty rises with the value of the jewels, Davis strategically chose to search for the token that corresponded with the Firefly jewel, the second-highest prize, for its value and because he would have an edge on other competitors.

From the basic poem hidden in the illustrations and the size and orientation of the acorns, Davis put together a five-by-five matrix system with the alphabet to solve the exact location of his token.

"I never actually read the book," he says. "I just got too bored with it."

Since he never finished reading the story, Davis relied on his puzzle-solving skills and applied things he learned from his cognitive science classes to navigate the clues.

Davis says his treasure could bring him as much as $350,000 because the all of the jewels are collectors' items and are currently on a nationwide tour until early 2008.

"There's always some weirdo who wants to collect them all," he says, but he's not complaining.

Already at work on his next set of clues in the treasure hunt, Davis says he would like use his prize money to open a bar and attend law school. He is also being courted by the ABC investigative news program 20/20 for a possible re-enactment.

"‘I knew you were going to do something significant. I just didn't know what it would be,'" Davis says his mother told him after he called her with the winning token in hand.

"A Treasure's Trove" is proving to be a fairy-tale story for both Davis and its author, Michael Stadther.

"It's just been a blast. It was a lot of fun to create, and it was a lot of hard work to create," Stadther says.

Stadther says he was inspired to write the book after reading "Masquerade," a book published about 20 years ago that contained clues to find a jewel in an English park.

After thinking about orchestrating a treasure hunt for more than two decades, Stadther wrote, illustrated and coded the book. He hid the 12 tokens, collectively worth more than $1 million, around the nation.

For the CEO-turned-author, the treasure hunt brings personal satisfaction, and for a UC Berkeley student who spent the last five years in a co-op, it brings a magical $280,000.

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