A small dg-related treasure1 has been hidden2 somewhere3 in London4.
Can you crack the clue5, deduce the location6 and find the treasure7?
Across the Green
Above the Eleven
Alongside the Angels
Beneath the Four
Happy hunting!8
8pm update: Ollie has found the treasure! Look, here it is! Well done! Even better, he's put the treasure back where he found it, so it's still there for everyone else to find.
Small print
1 Of course, when I say "treasure" what I really mean is "a small printed cardboard rectangle of virtually no value whatsoever." Let me explain. I recently decided to treat myself to 100 Moo cards. These are tiny business-card-type things, with a Flickr photo printed on one side and some personalised text on the other. Mine say diamond geezer on the back and are very pretty. I thought that my cards might be useful to give away to people, but no - I still had all 100 left a month after they arrived. So I thought I'd give one card away. I wrapped it in see-through plastic and hid it somewhere in London, so now I only have 99 cards left. But it's a feeble treasure, it really is. Sorry.
2 Of course, when I say "hidden" what I really mean is "at least partially visible to the naked eye without moving, lifting, digging or shifting anything." Many a treasure hunt has been wrecked by inappropriate moving, lifting, digging or shifting. It's all terribly bad publicity, and in this case terribly unnecessary.
3 Of course, when I say "somewhere" what I really mean is "on public land fully accessible 24 hours a day and most definitely not anywhere religious like a churchyard or something." I didn't want any of you hunting around private locations like buildings or graveyards or gardens by mistake. Because that's not where the treasure is.
4 Of course, when I say "London" what I really mean is "East London, specifically the London borough of Tower Hamlets." I was actually planning to hide three different treasure cards, just to keep you all busy, but hiding them proved to be a lot harder then I expected. I wanted to hide one somewhere in the City of London, but the City turned out to be almost 100% "buildings" and "churchyards". I wanted to hide one somewhere on Hampstead Heath, but the Heath was scarily vast and full of hiding places that you'd never ever find. So I only managed to hide one in Tower Hamlets. Sorry, because that's a bit of a rubbish location for any of you who don't live out this way.
5 Of course, when I say "can you crack the clue" what I really mean is "can you crack the clue but not go writing huge great hints in the comments box please." It would be all too easy to leap in and give the game away completely, especially if you're miles away from East London this morning sat at your desk with a burning desire to show off. Please, let's leave this one to be solved "in the field". Feel free to email me if you think you have any ideas or solutions, but don't go waving them around in public. Thanks.
6 Of course, when I say "deduce the location" what I really mean is "work out sort of where it is, and then go there, and narrow things down while you're on location". There's at least one line in the clue which will make absolutely no sense whatsoever until you're standing within a few metres of the correct spot. In case that helps.
7 Of course, when I say "find the treasure", what I really mean is "keep your fingers crossed that it's still there, and hasn't been stolen by an inquisitive child or eaten by a pigeon or tidied away by a council operative". It was definitely there at the weekend, and it should still be there now, but there are no guarantees in these things. I'd hate for someone to book a flight to London and make their way specially to the East End to hunt for a small piece of cardboard which turned out no longer to be there. No personal liability should be assumed.
8 Of course, when I say "happy hunting", what I really mean is "only take part if you happen to have a free Wednesday with sod all else to do". I'm deliberately not posting this at a weekend, because the last thing I want is several people wasting their time by turning up at the correct location in the afternoon after someone else has already found the treasure in the morning. Really, honestly, this is nothing more than a pointless pathetic competition with a wholly unworthy prize. But still, I thought it might be fun, maybe just this once.
Across the Green
