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Title: “Treasure Hunt”
Prompt: The Feared Pirate Captain Gridd has hidden a great piece of treasure. Are you clever enough to find it? This week’s contest answer is the missing piece of treasure.
Answer: RUBY
Correct entries: 188

Nice to be back after my two-week vacation, and big thanks to guest constructors Matt Sajak and The Feared Pirate Captain Gridd for subbing in while I was gone. Went mountain-climbing in Antarctica, was really fun! I’ll post pictures next week.

First insight, which several solvers mentioned noticing before they filled in a single letter: this grid has the unusual property of containing five 5×5 fields of white squares. Could be nothing, but turned out to be something in this case.

Second insight, upon solving the grid: for a treasure hunt you’re often thinking “X Marks the Spot,” and there are three X’s in this puzzle — and they are all contained within the central 5×5 box.

Now that’s awfully suspicious! The natural thing to do once you notice all of that is map the location of the X’s in the central 5×5 onto the other 5x5s — and lo, Captain Gridd was certainly trying to tell us something! In grid order they spell UND / ERT / HES / EAS. That’s “Under the seas,” ye landlubbers.

Now what? I don’t see RED or CARIBBEAN or AEGEAN or anything in there. Hmmm…

Oh hey…inside each of the four little “caves” in the grid lies a letter C! Read under those four, the only four C’s in the grid, and you find the hidden treasure — a RUBY. Congrats to everyone who located it! I want 10% as a finder’s fee.

M.B. writes:

this is a cool mechanism. Immediately brought to mind The Goonies and it brought warm fuzzy feelings.

No higher compliment possible for a treasure hunt meta than to be labeled Goonies-evoking. Thank you!

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer sounds like something you’ll want to do after solving this meta.