Eventually, three years later, the treasure was dug up, and Williams announced the contest closed. Lots of puzzle fans scoured through, trying to find the location of the hare, mapping the locations painted, working the implications of symbols, mixing the words into anagrams until they made something like sense, and then finally driving out to the back end of nowhere and digging a hole. Each of the pictures was surrounded by cryptic text, and had hidden images, odd symbology and weird puzzles in. When the book was published, an elaborate golden jewel pendant shaped like a hare - designed and crafted by Williams himself - was buried somewhere in Britain, with the promise that the book would act as a guide to help find it. The hare then travels quickly through the country, and finally speaks to the sun, but finds that he's been careless and has lost the gift he was supposed to deliver, and the reader is tasked with finding where he dropped it. The plot is fairly simple: The moon loves the sun, and to show how much she loves him, she gives a token of love to be delivered by the fastest creature around: Jack Hare. The solution to the puzzle was obtained by deciphering the codes: "Catherine's long finger over shadows earth buried yellow amulet midday points the hour in light of equinox look you" and the acrostic "close by Ampthill" from the 16 paintings contained within the book.Masquerade is a children's picture & puzzle book painted by Kit Williams and published in 1979. The book has been out of print for 20 years yet interest in Masquerade remains strong.
"The fact was that it was really there buried in the cold, wet earth." In those days there was no Lottery and the Daily Mirror had not even started doing bingo. "It was right for the times and probably would be impossible now in the age of the internet.
"We thought we only have to be tapped on the shoulder by a policeman and that would blow the whole gaff. He and University Challenge host Bamber Gascoigne, who acted as celebrity witness, set out to bury the hare with some trepidation. Despite the enthusiasm of his publisher Tom Maschler of Jonathan Cape, Williams really expected to sell the plates for the book as individual oil paintings and was astonished when it went on to sell nearly a million copies.
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