The Invitation 2 centers on the disappearance of six valuable artifacts during an annual treasure hunting and poker convention. During the investigation that follows, we meet several unique characters all trying to also solve the mystery.
Every attendee of Seeking Treasure Con 2026 in Las Vegas received a physical copy of this book. There was also a min-puzzle where attendees had to work together and figure out what a series of playing cards they received at the con spelled out. It said attendees get the book 30 days before the general public and the prize was $1,000 or more (if anyone donated to the prize pool).
A PDF version was emailed to attendees at the end of the convention. Throughout the book and PDF, names of people, places, and events are parodies of real-life counterparts. The "World Series of Frost" is a clear reference to the annual tribute to Forrest Fenn known as the World Series of Fenn, and the hosts are known as MooseBeam and Brio who are obvious references to the real-world hosts (and authors of this hunt) known by their online names of Cowlazars and Kpro.
Each chapter of the book ends with various ciphertext messages: a series of letters, timestamps, binary code, etc., which are the most obvious entry points into solving the hunt.
In a wonderful surprise, this Treasure Hunt Database site even gets a brief mention in the book.
Solution
Solver(s):
"Brian, Barbara, and Mo Finnegan"
Part 1
End of Chapter Ciphers
The obvious ciphers at the end of each chapter are solved via several different methods. Identifying what decryption method is part of the fun of the hunt. Each chapter cipher's decrypted plaintext is a logic puzzle grid statement, but there are not enough statements to fully solve a logic puzzle grid yet.
Ch. #
Cipher Type
Plaintext
1
cryptogram
Threediron does not wear pink and does not have the STC coin.
2
ASCII (hexadecimal)
The person who has the foreign coin worked on BS. [Beacon Star]
3
Sudoku (highlighted numbers from top to bottom, left to right)
1-607-225-5825 [phone number to an AI companion]
4
reversed text
The one with the cipher wheel does not drink margarita or bud light.
5
Morse code
Neither the compass finder nor the TTOKA competitor wore green.
6
remaining letters from wordsearch
Logic puzzles are awesome.
7
cryptogram
Rusty Nail drinker did not work on TTOKA.
8
braille
The person who wore yellow did not compete in TTI and did not drink iced tea.
9
pigpen
The hunter wearing orange does not drink Bud Light and does not have the cipher wheel
10
multi-tap phone SMS
Margarita drinker wears blue does not like XM
11
A1Z26 (number separation needed to be deduced)
Lou See's drink is either White Russian or margarita
12
A1Z26 (modified so 00 is a space, and AM is letter A)
TTOKA searcher has the STC coin
13
ASCII (octal)
Bob Meal doesn't have the Pokemon card or the foreign coin.
14
A1Z26 (atomic numbers)
Blue: no foreign coin, no BS. [Beacon Star]
15
A1Z26 (Roman numerals)
Screwdriver: no TTI or BTME.
16
ASCII (binary)
Foreign coin holder drank iced tea and did not wear yellow.
Poker Amounts
As a confirmer of all the items to be used in the logic puzzle grid, converting all the dollar amounts during the poker game on page 37 via A1Z26 gives the plaintext SUSPECT COLOR DRINK HUNT ITEM. This order will be important for the last step of the puzzle! And the order of
In-Story Clues
There are at least 7 extra clues for the logic puzzle grid directly in the text of the story. Specifically, on page 40, we read that the person in the bright red hoodie is drinking an “orange juice and vodka mix” that is a drinking commonly called a screwdriver, the compass owner is wearing forest green and focusing on the “Jacob Flowers' new hunt” (BTME), the cipher wheel owner is referred to with the “he” pronoun and “cut his teeth” on Xavier Marx. On page 98, Cookie says “A bud light for Brio, and an iced tea for me.”
The completed logic puzzle grid for part 1.
Coded Exchange Notes
The notes were “book ciphers” used on the poems from 4 prominent hunts with huge prizes. The person mentioned on each note was a parody name to the hunt creator: Justin Posey's poem from Beyond the Map's Edge, Jon Collins-Black's poem from There's Treasure Inside, Chad Bird's poem from Trezor Quest, Forrest Fenn's poem from The Thrill of the Chase. Again, we get 4 new logic puzzle statements to complete the grid a bit more.
Typos and Tarots
The final statements to complete the logic puzzle grid are each found over several pages. First, throughout chapter 9, several words are missing letters. Those missing letters in order say “Sylvia has the Pokemon card or treasure chest.” (The Y and L were swapped, but the solution was still clear.) Then throughout chapter 12, several Tarot cards are mentioned, even multiple identical cards, which a single Tarot deck does not have. Tarot cards are actually numbered, and using the number of the Tarot cards in an A0Z25 cipher (because Tarot cards start at number zero) gives the statement “Treasure chest owner wears red.” (The E in “owner” was accidentally a C, but again, the solution was still clear.)
The Email Address
So you have the completed logic puzzle, but now what? The final step of part one was discovering that an email address was also hidden in the text of the story. Swear words throughout the book were masked in comic book-style punctuation marks and symbols (technically, this is known as grawlix). The symbols all appear on the number keys of a keyboard, so converting the swears to numbers, then through A1Z26, you get the email address where you send your logic puzzle solve. Hunters had to figure out where the breaks in the numbers were for the A1Z26 sequence, e.g., should 214 decode to 21-4 (UD), 2-14 (BN), or 2-1-4 (BAD).
The text portion of the Part 2 document.
Part 2
After sending an email to the discovered address with the correct logic puzzle, you would eventually receive an email with an attachment titled “Part 2.docx.” Sometimes there was a tiny delay due to sleep schedules and someone having to verify each email. It wasn't until this point that one realized there was more to the hunt beyond just the book.
The part 2 document was only 3 pages long, and consisted of 8 clipart graphics, each with a specific number of lines underneath indicating the number of letters in the word describing each graphic. It also contained the text “Use the correct answers to find the next step. Use one word and find it. Find the rule. Use it to solve the next step." followed by a series of numbers like in a book cipher.
The intended solution was to realize that the 8 items were character, actor, or location names in the film It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963): Ding Bell, J. Russell Finch, Lennie Pike, Benjy Benjamin, Rancho Conejo airport, Spencer Tracy, Sid Caesar, and Mickey Rooney. Then interpret “use one word and find it” to find the only instance of the word “mad” in the entire book. It is a sentence saying Moosebeam dressed as the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland. Then “find the rule” meant to find the rule in Alice in Wonderland: Rule 42 is declared by the King during the trial: "All persons more than a mile high to leave the court." The wording of the rule wasn't important, it was the number. Use “42 to solve the next step” meant to use the wordsearch on page 42. Some hunters noticed the name Benjamin in the wordsearch, and realized they could use the “book cipher” looking code in the wordsearch (starting at bottom left, columns then counting up the rows) without getting the film reference on Alice connection.
Side 2 of Hunt Coin #2 which is also The Secret New York Verse coin, both from Uncharted Collectibles.
The cipher applied to the wordsearch grid resulted in COWLAZARS DISCORD TOP SONG. In the Cowlazars Discord, there is a channel called #songs-that-mean-something, and the top post in that channel is the video for Alanis Morissette's Uninvited, posted by Kpro. Verse 3, word 3 (V3.W3) is the word UNCHARTED, and that paired with “keep it a secret” indicated to go to the Uncharted Collectibles site (which Cowlazars is a partner of), and look at The Secret coin they used for one of Coin Hunt #2 (it was also available from the site as the New York Verse coin). It confused many searchers (a surprise to Cowlazars, as he explained in the solution video), but the solution was to use side 2 of the coin, find the first letters of words 1, 6, 29, and 40, and for the “twist 36” you took the last letter of the 36th word instead of the first word. It was also pointed out that the twist could equally have been to count to the 36th letter from the bottom of the coin phrase. Either way, you end with the C in “rhapsodic” and thus have the letters O-I-L-G-C. Emailing the found email address again with the word LOGIC got the hunter a reply with the part 3 code..
Part 3
We're almost at the finish line now! Emails with the correct answer of LOGIC were emailed back part 3: a series of 15 uniquely formatted numbers, one set of numbers per line. Here is the full list of numbers: 1-3(4), 5-1(5), 4-3(3), 1-1(1), 6-1(4), 5-1(4), 3-1(5), 5-2(1), 6-3(8), 2-3(2), 4-1(5), 6-1(2), 3-1(3), 3-1(1), 3-2(4).
This last cipher is solved by creating a grid based on the Poker Amounts solution: SUSPECT COLOR DRINK HUNT ITEM and the order of the suspects as they are first presented in the photos on page 22 and 23. Each set of numbers is decoded using the mapping PERSON-COLUMN (LETTER). For example, for 1-3(4), we look at the first person row (Cookie) then the third column (Iced Tea) and take the 4th letter (D). So the first letter in our answer is D.
The first person to email in the part 3 solution was the winner.
The final solution used our logic puzzle answers in the order dictated by the Poker Amounts cipher solution.
Final answer:
DISCOVER THE RULE
Solution Video
Mike Cowlazars goes over the solution to The Invitation 2 during a livestream on April 6, 2026. (Video jumps forward to where solution starts.)
