Hunting Time seed phrase hunt

June 29, 2026, 16:30 UTC. VeteranHODL tells X that a genuine Bitcoin seed phrase hides in the pages of his novel Hunting Time. He writes techno-thrillers about Bitcoin and used to serve in the British Army. Clues would follow, one photo at a time. "Find the clues. Recover the wallet. Keep what's inside."

Seven weeks later somebody did.

How the Hunting Time seed phrase was hidden

The author's own summary came two days after the claim. "'Hunting Time' was actually the biggest clue." The title is the method. Most words sit in the plot as times. A photo points at a page. The page has a time on it, say 12:24. Read it as a number, and word 1224 of the English BIP39 list is ocean.

The other words skip the clock. An electrical panel is electric. A neon sign reading "Every apology has a price" is apology. A hotel room with a curtain in the wind is, well, curtain. Some photos are that literal.

The twelve clues, one by one

The first five came on Mondays, one a week. Then the sequel got close and the pace went up.

Is #1224 counted from zero or from one?

From one. ocean is word 1224 counting from one, and 1223 from zero. Every number in the solution works the same way, connect at 378 included.

14 plus 60 isn't 74

Clue seven shows two helicopters, one marked 14 and one 60. The solution writes "14 + 60 → #1460". Not a sum. The numbers just sit side by side. Cheeky.

Why page 103 twice?

The watch in clue eight reads 01:03. The drone feed in clue eleven flags COMPONENT 0103. Both send you to page 103. A time there gives pepper, and a log time, 001704, gives stay. The author did say some words are "related to log times".

Which edition?

The paperback. On August 15 floflo777, 0xFlorent_ on X, asked whether you need the book at all. The answer: "you will need the paperback to solve the puzzle". Page numbers are paperback page numbers. Got the ebook? Bad luck.

Electrum, not BIP39

The words come from the BIP39 list, but the phrase isn't BIP39. Its checksum fails. The author said so on August 1, in his own way: the sats went "to a fresh electrum wallet". It's an Electrum SegWit seed. The prize sat on m/0'/0/2, the wallet's third receiving address. Same trap as LuckyLurker's Vault #1, which also wanted Electrum and a later index.

Did seven words make it easy?

Not really. After clue seven the author posted his own math: "After revealing seven seed phrase words, the entropy of the target wallet is 51 bits." Still safer than a Coldcard Mk3, he added, and three minutes later an edit put a number on that. 40 bits. Five words to go, and a whole novel to read for them.

Who solved Hunting Time?

The claim landed on August 18 at 02:07:20 UTC. One transaction took both 210,000 sat coins, 419,642 sats after the fee, to 3KBUS…. The author spotted it that day and congratulated the winner with a bonus prize offer. Plus one more hint, a bit late: "A major clue is in the title of the book..."

Two days later the full solution went up. Its last line names _radosinsky. The record credits them by that handle. Nothing public ties 3KBUS… to them, so the address stays out of the solver record.

Who funded the prize?

Two halves. The author sent 210,000 sats on July 22, 2023, when he started writing the book, he says. On July 31, 2026, mid hunt, "a generous stranger" added another 210,000. The record keeps the first as funding and the second as an increase. The first coins are three years older than the hunt, so preGenesis is set.

Rerun it yourself

import { get, verify } from "@agntn/puzzles";

const book = await get("hunting-time");
await verify(book!); // { verified: true, derivedAddress: "bc1qhzy6j4amw26z7e694mgfr7kvzl7xteu54f0a85", … }

The record keeps the published words as seed(...).electrum(). Plain seed(...) reads them as BIP39. Wrong wallet. Here's what the mark runs, straight from @agntn/keys:

import { deriveHDKey, getMasterKeyFromSeed } from "@agntn/keys/bip32";
import { deriveSeed } from "@agntn/keys/electrum";

const { seed } = deriveSeed(
  "ocean electric connect fly apology slender reopen pepper erupt curtain stay wedding",
);
deriveHDKey(getMasterKeyFromSeed(seed), "m/0'/0/2").privateKey; // f760c5b9…9686, as bytes

The key is public now. Don't send anything there.

What the record carries

Every clue post is a hint, quoted as written. Mostly that's "Clue Five." and friends, because the photo is the real clue. So every original upload ships in assets/hunting-time, and each hint's answer is its line from the solution. The June 15 teaser is a hint too, two weeks before the start. The cover's code comes from the genesis block, he wrote, and "I wonder if anyone has found the other hidden code yet...". Every cited post is archived in assets/sources/hunting-time.

The Hunting Time record

puzzle({
  chain: "bitcoin",
  address: "bc1qhzy6j4am…u54f0a85",
  status: Status.Solved,
  key: seed("ocean electr… wedding", "m/0'/0/2").electrum(),
})