And there was Forest Fenn's famous treasure hunt in the U.S.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/adventure/a43061508/forrest...

As a footnote to this, can I recommend Stuart Ashen’s talk about Hareraiser, a lacklustre kind-of follow up and contender for “worst video game ever”:

https://youtu.be/ouvi-fwrfIY

Yes — i thought the same. Here’s a 2015 article that got me into the topic: https://hazlitt.net/feature/goes-all-way-queen-puzzle-book-d...

The human ability to find meaning in anything (to see patterns that aren’t there, etc.) — apophenia - gets cranked up to 11/10 when an incentive — such as the treasure hunt — is added to the mix.

> To complete it, the puzzler had to draw a line from the eye of each of the animals in the 15 paintings through hand or paw to a letter in the border. This revealed a word or phrase which, put together, formed the crucial clue.

would have loved to see this illustrated. sadly the article makes no attempt

There is an illo of the Masquerade hare in the article, to be fair, although it's barely mentioned AFAICS.