Zoe Berg, Senior Photographer

The Veritas Search, a campus-wide scavenger hunt that ran for a week and a half, ended on Nov. 4. During the hunt, students searched for capsules, each with a prize. 

Initially, 10 capsules were hidden, and six new capsules and prizes were added later — all were found. Prizes include a private lunch with Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis at Mory’s, a dining hall meal chosen by and dedicated to the winner, which would be served in all 14 residential colleges, a personal song of any genre played by Harkness Tower every week for six weeks and a private dinner and overnight stay at the Yale Club of NYC. 

To create the prizes, the Veritas Search partnered with several Yale departments, administrators, affiliated organizations and alumni. Among the new prizes added were meetings with Anderson Cooper ’89, Jodie Foster ’85 and Allison Williams ’10. 

The planning process

The concept of The Veritas Search originated last winter in the Pauli Murray computer room. 

“Lucas and I were brainstorming about something campus-wide we wanted to do during our time here at Yale. Something the entire community could be a part of and get really excited about, especially during this time of the year in October when it can get easy for people to get sucked into their work,” said Neil Mathew ’26, who co-founded the Veritas Search along with Lucas Anmolsingh ’26. 

After the idea was finalized last January, the two students contacted Lewis, who offered a personal one-on-one dinner as the first reward and connected the students with various administrators and leaders around Yale. Over the summer, the students then pitched to departments across campus to negotiate feasible rewards. 

“I think it would be realistic to say that we spent 250 hours individually on this over the course of the entire year,” Mathew said. “Besides creating the capsules, website and timeline, Lucas and I spent a lot of time discussing how to craft over 50 pages worth of emails so that the pitches were clear and people would be willing to give rewards.”

Students search

After the search began, excited students took to locations across campus hoping to find hidden capsules. 

Kyle Chen ’27 found the first capsule just after the search commenced.

“I was with my girlfriend, Sunny Vuong ’27, and we scoured all the buildings on Hillhouse as we made our way towards central campus,” Chen wrote. “After an hour, we were about to give up when we decided to check the courtyard behind SSS. We were tired and by then not expecting much, but then I checked under one of the benches and the capsule was neatly tucked under it.”

Later into the hunt, Vuong found the fifth capsule in Linsly-Chittenden Hall underneath a bench on the fourth floor. Vuang wrote that she had previously been to the fourth floor of LC for meetings with her English professor and knew it was “definitely a more niche space.” Based on where the previous four capsules were found, she thought LC was a perfect location — “a highly trafficked building, but one with just the right among of elusive spaces.”

Second-prize winner Joshua Li ’26 discovered a capsule in the Humanities Quadrangle shortly after reading the Veritas Search announcement email. 

“I was studying in HQ relentlessly, so I decided to take a break by walking around the HQ Courtyard at midnight. There, I thought, ‘oh, wouldn’t this be a great place to hide something?’” Li wrote. After five minutes of digging within bushes, he found a capsule. “I hadn’t planned to search, but procrastination sometimes yields serendipitous results.”

James Collier ’26 used the Charles McKim hint on the Veritas website to find the third capsule. He looked up the name in connection with Yale and only found a book listing in Haas Library — but he couldn’t find anything in the library. 

Then, Collier researched buildings that McKim, an architect, designed in New Haven. Collier found out that McKim had designed the Wolf’s Head building, which Wikipedia listed as being located next to Haas. However, Collier then discovered that Wolf’s Head had moved buildings since its founding and that parts of the original building are now a part of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies library on 77 Prospect St. 

“After what felt like the longest class of my life, I biked over to 77 Prospect as soon as I could. I climbed up to the second-floor library, tried searching the attic, but I still didn’t see anything. Right as I was about to head out, I took one last look around and found it. A metal capsule sitting in the glass cabinet of the library,” Collier wrote to the News. 

Collier mentioned conversations with other prize winners who felt they had a “general idea” of where a capsule might have been and used that feeling as a starting point. 

While he was fortunate to have a hint, Collier wrote, “It was scary because I knew everyone was looking for that exact hint as well. I should really thank Google search and my bike.” 

Choosing prizes

The winners are invited to a commencement dinner where they will select their prizes in a draft fashion, starting with the student who secured the first capsule. 

Chen, who found the first capsule, can choose any prize and plans to select the dedicated tree planted on campus. It “embodies the ideals of sustainability and environmental consciousness” and he “would cherish the opportunity to leave a lasting mark of my experience and time here at Yale,” Chen wrote.

Collier and Vuong also expressed interest in choosing the tree planting as a prize. 

Samuel Vargas ’28, finder of the seventh capsule, told the News that he hopes to secure the meeting with Tom Steyer ’79. 

“He is a successful entrepreneur who, through the growth of his initial business, has made many commitments to philanthropy and leading the climate change fight through his nonprofit. I think our ambitions align through those aspects and I would love to have the opportunity to speak with and learn more from him,” Vargas wrote.

After learning that Chen will choose the tree planting prize, Vuong, a pre-med student, has opted for a personal dinner with Dean Nancy Brown of the School of Medicine instead. 

Seth Thomas ’27, the winner of the final capsule told the News that he was focused on a specific prize. However, as capsules were found and his chance of getting his choice of prize declined, he realized he was “actually searching for the purpose of winning the game itself.”

Future of the Veritas Search

Student winners of the search expressed gratitude for the event and for Mathew and Anmolsingh’s work, describing it as a welcome break from academic obligations and the pace of everyday college life. 

Vargas told the News, “The kid inside of me couldn’t ignore a scavenger hunt this big! It allowed me to explore and appreciate places on campus that I’ve passed before while also getting to explore some new places that are less known or less recognized.”

The founders expressed their appreciation for how well students received the event and thanked students for all the positive messages they received from participants.

Anmolsingh also emphasized that projects like the Veritas Search can be planned by anyone with a vision and commitment to an idea.

“Not to get corny or anything, but I think the beauty of the event was that me and Neil are just two regular students — we’re not you know crazy cracked or anything — who wanted to do something fun for our fellow undergraduates,” Anmolsingh said. “I think that’s the most important thing with starting any big project — just overcoming that barrier of should we do this? … And overcoming that sense of, what if it doesn’t work out?” 

Winners of the Veritas Search expressed widespread enthusiasm for continuing the scavenger hunt in future years.

Mathew and Anmolsingh expressed that, given the positive response, they also hope to continue the games as a Yale tradition and hope that it will keep growing. However, they clarified that many logistical aspects are still up in the air. The two are currently discussing the feasibility of repeating the search yearly or every other year. 

“More than anything, we wanted the rewards to encapsulate core aspects of Yale tradition and hit all the different sectors of campus,” Anmolsingh said. “We thought that even if we couldn’t get super high-end people, the event could at least be a celebration of Yale and everything that makes it special.” 

The clue to the last found capsule was “Charles Gwathmey | La Guerra civil en 2000 cartels.”