You could win $5000 for solving this puzzle

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UPDATE: The artist has been identified and the name "Mena" is her signature and probably not a clue in this puzzle. I exchanged a few messages with her and unfortunately she doesn't know the answer and doesn't think she was ever told what the answer was. Please don't reach out to her yourself. ADDITIONAL NOTES ABOUT THIS PUZZLE (Please upvote this) I want to acknowledge that this puzzle includes drawings of Native American headdresses in a way that wouldn't be ok these days. This puzzle was released in 1985 and it was a different time. I hope this imagery doesn’t play a huge part in the final answer. Yes, the title is very click-bait-y, but I wanted to get as many eyeballs on this as possible to try to get it solved. I also plugged the $5,000 number into an inflation calculator and apparently that’s equal to $14,000 today. So I’m definitely not giving the winner $14,000! If it does get solved, I was thinking about doing a donation to a charity of the winner’s choice. But let’s see if anyone manages to solve it first.

In the poem the only capital letters are LLA -> Latitude, Longitude, Altitude. I think the answer to the center and ground part will give you latitude coordinates, the trees longitude and the sound altitude!

What stands out to me is all the directional cues in the puzzle. There are a lot of people pointing, and objects rotated towards a particular direction. I wonder if following a visual path will be part of the solution? When I look at the exact centre, I see a boy with a heart lollipop pointing north east, towards a girl playing an instrument. There are hearts around her with their bottom points going right. If I follow that direction, I see a staircase going up and people with heart vases walking towards it. There's also a fish playing a trumpet, which is facing towards the staircase. All that makes me think I should go up the stairs. At the top, there's a queen holding a magnifying glass. If I follow her gaze through the glass, I need to look left, which takes me to a bridge marked with hearts. On the bridge, there's a cat playing an instrument, which faces left, so I keep looking left. I see a train going north west, which leads my eyes to the "heartitude" flag on the tower. My eyes go down the tower, and I see it has hearts with their bottom points facing down. I keep looking down and follow the curved path with the mouse character. Around there, I see 2 pigs with heart arrows and various characters looking/pointing right (like the tree holding money, a girl with a heart dress, a fountain bird looking right...). I get a bit lost here... not sure where to go next! It takes me to the beach. There I see a star marked in the ground. I also see a bucket + shovel in the sand, marked with a heart. Maybe that's the end? But I'm not confident because that entire path ignores the bottom half of the puzzle. In the bottom half, you have a tambourine player pointing left, and trumpet-playing beavers pointing north-west. Not sure what their role could be yet. Will keep staring at this and thinking

I think I might have found your artist. I looked up Mena Dolobowsky and her illustration style looks a lot like the ones in the puzzle

UPDATE: The artist has been identified and the name "Mena" is her signature and probably not a clue in this puzzle. I exchanged a few messages with her and unfortunately she doesn't know the answer and doesn't think she was ever told what the answer was. Please don't reach out to her yourself. I kept looking at the puzzle after filming this, and another idea I had would be to think of other definitions of the word “sound,” like as a body of water. Are we meant to look for outlines of places like the Puget Sound? Also, when I mentioned the “tic-tac-toe” dress and quilt, if you look behind them there is a rabbit with three X’s in a row, plus two X’s on the white base. But what does it mean??

Kansas City's official slogan was 'Heart of America' since 1915, since it is close to geographic center of continental US. It has also been known as the city of fountains at various times. Those two seem like a pretty strong clues to me, but I didn't know where to go from there. Also when I came upon Kansas, suddenly everything reminded me of Wizard of Oz. There is girl with red shoes and a dog, there is queen that could be Glinda, the good witch of the North, everyone except her are children or children sized like in Munckinland. At center bottom there is someone that looks a lot like mayor of Munckinland. In the distance there is yellow brick road and everything is under the rainbow. I realize there are a lot of fairy tales mixed in this puzzle, but if Wizard of Oz is intentional clue it could mean that north on this map is where the queen is. So what I am now looking for is a place, maybe park in Kansas city that matches the puzzle. As to where is the treasure i think it is buried on the beach. Poem said to look to the center and the exact center is boys hand that is showing to the queen (directly to her heart, I drew a line in illustrator) and queen is looking through the magnifying glass at the beach where heart bucket is. This is all I got after days of thinking, if someone has idea how to continue, please share.

In the unlikely event someone solves this I am SO excited for the follow up video, love this kinda content from you!

There are hearts on the ground in the center. The tree with the money is a pear tree. Clue Keeper's Trail sign is next to a frog wearing the stockings from Wizard of Oz. heart + pear + a movie set in Kansas... Looks like an artists rendition of Harper Community Park in Harper, Kansas. It even has the arched bridge and arched (rainbow shaped) entrances with suns painted on them, a swing set where the beavers are playing in the hammock, and it looks like an old arborist's building in the SW corner.

I a feel a collaboration with Cracking the Cryptic is in order.

I finally bought a table big enough to fit your 3000 piece puzzle and I solved it :) It was awesome! Thank you Karen for the beautiful puzzle. Will there be a third Ravensburger puzzle from you? Asking for a friend 🥰

Have you reached out to cracking the cryptic team and community? Mark and Simon are amazing solvers

13:16 when another tab goes flying off 😅 this puzzles only flaw really! It is SO CUTE. I love this illustration it’s so fun

The letter "c" with a line over it is a medical abbreviation often used by doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals. The symbol looks like this: c. The c is almost always lower-case. This symbol actually has a very simple meaning. A c with a line over it just means "with". This abbreviation is often used on patient charts and prescriptions, as well as information or notes written by medical professionals.

I think the first clues point at the trees near the enter sign. If you look at the trees there is a dragon that tail is ”S” shaped. Then if you look to the ground there are letters that could be either u or c. Then if you look for a sound there are beavers playing instruments between the two trees with shirts that have letters r and b. Those words spell SCRUB. But after that I’m lost 😅 maybe the scrub is another clue that points to somewhere else in the picture? Is there someone scrubbing something or doing something that could cause a scrubbing sound?

I believe it is in Nebraska, because it's in the center ("at the heart") of USA, and the nickname of the state is also "Tree Planters' State". The river, the plains, the dunes, and the mountains in the illustration also seem to be pointing to places in Nebraska, and the treasure could be "buried" inside of the tunnel of Omaha's Aquarium, since the instuctions point to the possibility to it beeing "buried in the water" and it is indeed an unlikelly place to describe something as beeing "buried". Also the "clue finders trail" leads to a tunnel, we have a mermaid at the end of it, and lots of fish walking in the ground. I believe the sound reference would be for the fish next to the mermaid playing trumpet, but it's a wild guess.

I love your deep dives into vintage puzzles

I can't wait for an update about this puzzle!! So interesting!

Loving the regular posting! Missed your videos every Sunday! I look forward to them every single Sunday! Love your content! Thank you!🎉❤

I love this mystery! As for the puzzle image, I almost never like busy illustrations, but this one - curiously - looked fun to make.