There’s no chest full of gold awaiting those who partake in a secretive treasure hunt taking place at Zachary’s Chicago Pizza in Oakland, California—successful hunters get a $10 Zachary’s gift card. But that’s been enough to ignite excitement amongst Bay Area sleuths, two of whom have solved the case. According to the pizzeria, there are 13 more gift cards available.
As first reported by SFGate, Zachary’s runs a biannual art contest. One of the winners of last year’s contest quietly hid a “puzzle” inside their work of art that hangs on the wall of the pizza company’s Grand Lake location. A year passed without anybody noticing.
The artist, who has remained anonymous to the public, finally got in touch with the pizzeria to explain the puzzle they’d created. The restaurant’s ownership liked the mystery so much that they ended up recently announcing a promotion: fifteen $10 gift cards to the first group of people to complete the treasure hunt. “You’ll need to use your own ingenuity to identify the correct painting, which presents a puzzle that’ll direct you to one of 15 $10 digital Zachary’s gift cards online,” the website explains. “You will need to enter your email address to claim a found gift card, which will be emailed to you by the artist.”
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The timing happened to work out well for Zachary’s, which is celebrating its 41st anniversary in business, in addition to the fifth anniversary of the Grand Lake location. The deep-dish pizza brand has five total locations in the East Bay, two of which are in Oakland.
“I think that it makes everything cooler if there are cool treasure hunts to go on,” the artist told SFGATE. “That’s the kind of society I want to live in, so any chance that I have where I can bring something like that into the community, and into our Bay Area society, I’m just always up for it.”
After reaching out to the restaurant to explain what was going on, the artist then wrote a post on Reddit to generate interest in the treasure hunt. The artist claims to have dropped some hints in that post, but what are those hints? Your guess is as good as ours.
“The one thing that I can’t stress enough is to just be cool,” the artist wrote on Reddit. “Don’t touch the paintings, don’t cause a traffic bottleneck in their restaurant, don’t climb on anything, etc. Zachary’s didn’t ask for me to meddle in their business with my little game, but they’re being cool about announcing it with me. So just be cool and enjoy the pizza!”
The pizza place echoed many of those same thoughts on its website, where the complete details of the contest were explained. “All of us at Zachary’s… [hope] this treasure hunt inspires our community to always be creative and generous,” the restaurant wrote. “Happy treasure hunting!”
