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With the annual arrival of the Winter Carnival buttons, we get our first glimpse of the rules for the Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt. Last year, we got a new twist on the clues. One hour prior to the official release time online, the clues were released in a scrambled form. Not that we really needed the unscrambled clue, given our penchant to attach meaning to every single word in every single clue, regardless of how meaningless it may be.

Thanks to Diggorious Rex, we have a new game in town: the Cooler Crew Picture Tag.

The gist of the game is that someone posts a picture of a somewhat-well-known, but identifiable location, with something that identifies that they were there (usually something like their car). Occasionally the poster will give clues as to where the picture was taken. The goal of everyone else is to find the spot, take the same picture (with your own car), and post it. The first one who claims the spot, has 24 hours to post the next picture to find.

Not likely, but the Crew is now up to 5 finds in 2012. In addition to Barefootguy and Diggorius Rex''s Hugo find, and Cluey and me2''s White Bear Lake and Cottage Grove finds, Cluey and me2 are also the happy finders of the Little Canada and New Brighton medallions as well. Total winnings for the group: something on the order of $2125. Not bad, crew. Not bad.

The Cooler Crew has found the treasure medallions in 3 of thes festival hunts in 2012. Barefootguy and Diggorious Rex found the Hugo Good Neighbor Days Spike on June 10 near Clearwater Creek, while Me2 (and she insists Clue Master, but everyone else knows otherwise, something about keeping score on total finds) found the Cottage Grove Strawberry Fest Medallion in Hamlet Park on June 16.

At approximately 2am, Lange Wallgren, of Osseo, found the 2012 Pioneer Press medallion in Tony Schmidt Park in Arden Hills. Lange will split the prize money with four other co-finders, Nate Buck of Cottage Grove and Corey Hargreaves of New Brighton,as well as Coolerheads Alex Valen of North Oaks and past finder Jake Ingebrigtson of St. Paul. The five had a gentlemen's agreement set up before the find to split the prize if they found it. It took the group 11 clues and hours of digging in Tony Schmidt to find the medallion and bring home $10,000.

WCCO interviewed a bunch of Coolerheads at the ABB on January 18. The stories will be featured on the January 20 morning news show, once in the 5am hour and once in the 6am hour, and possibly on Saturday morning. A separate story on Rob and Jake is planned for January 23, while one about Clue Master and his "tools" is planned for later in the week if the hunt goes that far. We'll be updating this story with the video links as they are posted.

This year there are some interesting new twists on the Treasure Hunt.

For starters, the Pioneer Press is giving away the medallion used in the past 5 treasure hunts as a contest prize. We all have a chance to own a real piece of treasure hunt history.