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The winner of the Project Skydrop treasure hunt, an Andover meteorologist, has come forward
Meteorologist Dan Leonard has claimed the solid gold Project Skydrop trophy, but the game's creators say the treasure hunt isn't over.
Weather patterns and cloud coverage were the ultimate treasure map for an Andover-based meteorologist who cracked the Project Skydrop mystery and found a solid gold trophy in some Western Massachusetts woods last week.
Dan Leonard’s identity remained a mystery for several days after he found the small trophy — valued at more than $26,000 — in Wendell State Forest last Tuesday. Eventually, News Center Maine tracked Leonard down and connected him with Project Skydrop’s co-creators, video game designers Jason Rohrer and Tom Bailey.
More on the treasure hunt:
Leonard told WCVB he became hooked after reading a news article about the treasure hunt, which began Sept. 19. There was little to go on at first; a map on the game’s website showed a red circle over much of the Northeast, the radius shrinking day by day. Webcam images showed the trophy’s location in real time, and for $20, participants could also score daily aerial photos of the treasure.
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A longtime meteorologist with The Weather Company, which has an office in Andover, Leonard told WCVB the cloud patterns and temperature readings from the webcam revealed further clues in his search.
“I analyzed any time where it was sunny and any time where it was cloudy and sort of lined that up to possible areas where it could be, so I slowly whittled it down,” he told the news outlet. “It was a process of elimination.”
He eventually set off into Wendell State Forest near the town of Erving, scouring the forest floor until he came across a downed tree that looked like a clue, WCVB reported.
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“So I kind of get down real low, and I’m looking closely, and then suddenly, there it is,” Leonard told WCVB. “It was so camouflaged that, literally, it just blended in so perfectly.”
In an update posted to Project Skydrop’s Discord, Rohrer offered further details on Leonard’s victory.
“He actually stared right at the treasure and didn’t see it,” Rohrer wrote. “He walked away, thinking he had found the wrong logs. He was about to leave, … and then he came back to take one more look, because those logs looked like such a close match. Then, staring at the leaves in the spot he had already checked, he suddenly saw that the treasure was there after all.”
According to Rohrer, Leonard joined the search on Sept. 25, paying the $20 fee for daily clues.
“The aerial clues helped him in two ways,” Rohrer explained. “First, they showed him that the treasure was in a large, deciduous beech grove, and there aren’t many large beech groves in the Erving area. Second, they showed him a ‘map’ of what the scene looked like around the treasure (the logs, etc.).”
But according to News Center Maine, the game isn’t over just yet — there’s still the matter of the $87,600 “bounty,” accessible through a secret message hidden on the trophy. According to the news outlet, Rohrer and Bailey advised Leonard not to show the entire trophy to anyone, but the meteorologist said he’d already let dozens of people check it out.
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“Time is of the essence, as it was last time, and I don’t think weather maps are going to help you this time,” Rohrer said, according to News Center Maine.
However, Leonard said he’s not sweating it.
“Let’s say I don’t get it: I still had a really good time and got a treasure out of it,” he told News Center Maine.
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