Clue #8 ends treasure hunt

Greg Barnes was supposed to be home sick this week. Instead, he was deciphering clues, searching online about obscure Japanese history, and prowling Harbor Island, hoping to find a hidden medallion — the prize of this year's citywide treasure hunt, Emerald City Search.

On Wednesday morning, the 42-year-old found the blue-and-white ceramic medallion wrapped in plastic under a wooden bench in Seacrest Park in West Seattle. He won $2,500 in cash and prizes.

The daily clues in the treasure hunt that began Oct. 17 were inspired by the Seattle Art Museum's latest exhibit, "Japan Envisions the West," but that didn't help Barnes out much.

"My wife and I are both computer scientists," Barnes says with a laugh, "so Japanese history's not really our thing."

Barnes is a software engineer at the University of Washington, a position that, according to the official rules, does not exclude him from winning the Emerald City Search. The contest is organized by the University of Washington College of Arts and Sciences, the UW Alumni Association and Hillel UW.

"If we made all faculty, staff and students ineligible, that'd be about 70,000 people who couldn't participate," says organizer Marilyn Kliman of the UW. Barnes was not affiliated with anyone who wrote clues or organized the search, either this year or last.

Barnes, who lives in Seattle's Wedgwood neighborhood with his wife and two children, followed the search in fits and starts. He forgot about it on the first day, and on the second day, he'd come up with a few "bad ideas," he says. "I started searching at Freeway Park in the rain. I didn't find anything. I just got wet."

After that, he gave up for a little bit. It wasn't until he had some free time on Monday, nursing that cold and "supposedly getting some rest," that he checked out the clues again.

Monday's clue read, "Eye behind an eye behind yet another eye look at the heavens." Barnes was sure that meant it was hidden under a public telescope. (It wasn't.) Tuesday's clue, which refers to a "fan-shaped island in Nagasaki Harbor," got him a little closer. With a little research online, Barnes discovered that fan-shaped island was man-made. That led him to Seattle's man-made island, Harbor Island.

"So I spent a couple hours looking for publicly accessible telescopes around there. There weren't any, so I knew I was missing something," he says.

Then, things started coming together. Wednesday's clue indicates that the medallion is "under boards," so Barnes headed to Seacrest Park — a place that the rest of the clues, taken together, seemed to indicate — and started looking under all the boards he could find.

"Turns out the whole park is full of 'boards.' The pier. The whole water taxi area. The picnic tables. Everything!" he laughed.

He was just about to give up, knees brown and wet from kneeling all over the park, when he spotted a bench in the distance.

Two ladies were headed there, too. Barnes headed faster.

"I got there and looked under it quickly and when I pulled it out, I heard one lady say, 'He found it!' " he says. "I got there just in time."

Haley Edwards: 206-464-2745 or hedwards@seattletimes.com