Sisters crack Gaybo’s £10k treasure hunt

May 1998

Skill at crossword puzzles helped two Manor Kilbride sisters to crack the clues in a national treasure hunt last week.

And their victory won Ita O’Donoghue and Tina Cruise the choice of a gold bar or £10,000.

The women’s success also brought a premature end to this year’s Gay Byrne Show National Lottery Hunt - for cluesetter Michael Holmes had four further clues prepared for the thousands of participants.

Ita and Tina cracked 14 clues altogether and undertook a 700 mile zig-zagging odyssey through Tipperary, Galway, Laois and Kilkenny in search of the treasure.

‘We did come close a few times in the past,’ says Ita, who reveals that they began participating in the hunt in its second year, 1992.

‘He couldn’t believe it when we rang him,’ says Ita, who got the job of reading out the password to Michael Holmes to confirm they’d found the right place - ‘L.O. L.O. L.O.’ (say it out loud!)

The final clue, which Tina says she will never forget, was: ‘Four brown for the weary, four more for the eaters, joy in the right angle, despite weepers nearby.’

They’d already been in Portumna and like other treasure hunters, thought initially that the ‘right angle’ referred to the square there. But Ita had already worked out that the clue seemed to refer to a picnic bench.

It was a moment of intuitive inspiration at the crossroads outside the Ferry Inn in Portumna that led the two women, along with Tina’s husband Alan and son Gerard, to Lorrha in Co Tipperary. There, they clicked straight away that the four willow trees near a picnic bench were probably the ‘weepers’.

It was actually Gerard, who was on a day off from school, who found the tiny plastic envelope containing the RTE documentation.

Inside there was an ornate silver brooch, in the shape of a harp, and a piece of paper containing the prizewinner’s password.

For the two sisters - who live right next door to each other - deciphering the cryptic clues was an enjoyable challenge, and an extension of their love of crossword puzzles.

In one town, the drug dealer who had never been arrested was a pharmacist called Freeman, and the ‘black apple’ brought them to a shop named ‘Bramley’s’.