Hunt History
The first Armchair Treasure Hunt was set by Paul Coombs, known as Pablo, in 1985, for staff at the software consultancy Logica. From 1988 onwards a Hunt has been set every year by a wide variety of setters and teams, 14 of them by Pablo himself. These days the Hunt is open to all comers, and teams enter from as far afield as the USA, Singapore & New Zealand.
Hunts have covered an eclectic variety of themes, from foxhunting and Italo Calvino (two of Pablo's own hunts) to the Royal Parks, astrology, and the voyage of the Beagle. All past Hunts can be found on this website under the Archive tab.
More ATH history can be found on the Pablo “In Memoriam“ page and in each hunt’s Answers tab in the Archive. Additionally the PATHfinders team biography, submitted for ATH 2015, presents the history of Pablo’s former team as a “mini-ATH”, paying homage to puzzles and themes used over the first 30 hunts (solution available on request).
Pablo sadly died in 2007, and the Hunt and this website have been renamed in his honour.
In 2014, after the sun set on Logica, this independent web site was setup to continue the tradition of an annual Christmas hunt. Dave Harding organized a group of Past Setters of the Logica Armchair Treasure Hunt to manage this site and future hunts. In 2021, to reflect the diversity of setters, this group was expanded to include setters without a Logica connection.