The Daily Mail Treasure Hunt is on! In the summer of 2020, the UK’s highest-circulation newspaper, The Daily Mail, commissioned me to create a series of exclusive search-and-find puzzles for their popular annual month-long puzzle event with a £50,000 prize!
In previous years the Daily Mail had reprinted search-and-find scenes from my books Where’s the Bunny? and Where’s the Elf? in special puzzle supplements, but this was the first time they had comissioned original work. They didn’t give me much advance notice, and, in true newspaper style, many of the pieces were only completed the night before publication!
The Daily Mail Treasure Hunt
The competition ran for over four weeks, and the new cartoon puzzles appeared in each week’s Saturday edition. The search-and-find puzzles were designed and printed to fill a full newspaper page, with additional puzzle elements on the facing page. The illustrations were designed to challenge and entertain a very broad range of readers of all ages. They included lively scenes like Trafalgar Square, and , and focused on the hunt for a golden unicorn.
It was very exciting to know my work would be seen my millions of readers across the UK… before becoming wrapping for fish and chips the next day! Thanks to friends and family in the UK I managed to get copies of the newspapers, so I know it really happened.
These puzzles were so well received that the newspaper commissioned three more exclusive scenes the following year. Each time they gave me some general guidance for the scenes required for the puzzles, and a few specific things to include, but otherwise I had a very free had in what I could draw. Even so, the editors did have a few specific little changes here and there, so I know they were looking closely at the images!
All these hidden object puzzles (plus a few others I did while nobody was looking) are now collected in my book Where’s Itsy Bitsy Spider?
I documented the creation process with a time-lapse video drawing the Trafalgar Square puzzle — showcasing the care and detail behind every illustration.
Well it sure was fun to be an actual newspaper puzzle artist for a bit, even if it was only during some weird pandemic-related alternate-universe scenario! Thanks to kind people who sent me fan mail! Let me know if you’d like to see me do more like this in the future.
Buy prints and more in the Urfspace Redbubble Store.
About Chuck Whelon:
Chuck Whelon is a San Francisco-based cartoonist and illustrator known for his intricate search,-and-find puzzles, humorous fantasy comics, and science fiction art. His work has appeared internationally in books, games, and newspapers, captivating audiences with playful detail and wit….[more…]
