Bay pair finds Coldplay prize

Lauren Bracken, left, and Annalie Tennant used teamwork to work out where Coldplay had hidden their lyrics in Tauranga. Photo / George Novak

Two Bay women have won an international treasure hunt by uncovering handwritten lyrics by band Coldplay at Tauranga City Library.

To promote their upcoming album Ghost Stories, the UK band hid lyrics in nine libraries around the world and began posting clues on Twitter.

Tauranga fan Lauren Bracken said she had been following the lyrics hunt on Twitter in the "small chance" one was hidden in New Zealand.

She was in Auckland yesterday when she read the seventh hint tweeted by Coldplay, "CLUE 7: Where the Apterygidae family have plenty in the bay, find the City Library on Willow and look for Ms Jackson's THoHH #lyricshunt."

That was followed by photos of the entrance to the Tauranga Library shortly before the girls made their discovery.

Ms Bracken said she recognised the reference to the Bay of Plenty and knew the library was in Willow St.

A quick web search revealed the apterygidae family is the classification of a kiwi.

She immediately sent a message to her friend Annalie Tennant in Tauranga who drove to the library while Ms Bracken researched the book from Auckland. Ms Tennant found the lyrics to A Sky Full of Stars in The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson and the girls tweeted a photo of their discovery soon after.

Library staffer Harley Couper, who had been following the tweets and twigged just minutes after Ms Tennant arrived at the library, had raced downstairs to find the book.

"I couldn't find it and then I saw it down on the ground. It was on the bottom shelf, and obviously someone had pillaged the letter from the book mere minutes before me," Mr Couper said. "Good on her, well done, but I would have loved to have found it myself."

Ms Tennant, who was just sitting down to breakfast when she got Ms Bracken's message yesterday morning said the day turned out to be "unexpectedly exciting".

"My Twitter has been going insane all day," said Ms Bracken, receiving congratulatory messages from Coldplay fans from all over the world.

The friends had not decided what they would do with the lyrics but agreed they would keep them and frame them, joking they may have to cut them in half to share them.

Coldplay has sold more than 70 million records worldwide.

- Additional reporting by Jamie Morton

Discovered lyrics

*Vasconcelos Library, Mexico City
*Singapore National Library
*Rikhardinkatu Library, Helsinki
*Sant Pau-Santa Creu Library, Barcelona (including the golden ticket)
*Dartford Library, Kent
*New York Public Library
*Tauranga City Library, New Zealand

Tweets by @coldplay