Daily Mail’s Treasure Hunt prize-winner tells of her joy at getting a £10,000 wake-up call

When Linda Underwood got home from her night shift at 6am on Saturday, she decided to sleep for a few hours so she could enjoy her weekend.

Three hours later, she was woken by a phone call informing her that her puzzle-solving skills had bagged her £10,000 in the Daily Mail’s Royal Treasure Hunt.

After a cup of coffee to wake herself up, Mrs Underwood said: ‘I’m still trying to get over it. I tend not to sleep in on a Saturday anyway if I can help it or else I lose my day – so it was a nice wake-up call.’ For Mrs Underwood, 57, a parcel courier at East Midlands Airport, and her husband Kelvin, 64, the money is life-changing.

The couple, who have been married for 37 years, plan to move down to Cornwall from Coalville in Leicestershire.

‘We go to Cornwall every year for a week’s holiday which we’ve been doing for God knows how many years,’ she said. ‘We keep saying we were going to move and we made a decision at Christmas that we should start looking this year.

‘This will help immensely. My husband is not very good on his legs, he is registered disabled, so we’re after a bungalow because it’s a lot easier to get around.’

Mrs Underwood has been solving puzzles in the Daily Mail for years – and she is delighted that her work finally paid off.

She unscrambled six riddles about Queen Victoria throughout the week to enter them into the solutions grid in Friday’s paper, which finally revealed the answer: the Royal Albert Hall.

‘I love puzzles,’ she said. ‘I’ve been doing puzzles for years, I always enter the Easter Egg one and I entered this one last time you did it, but never in a million years thought that I would win.’ Our Royal Treasure Hunt is running for three weeks with a total of £50,000 up for grabs. If you want a chance to win £10,000 in jewels or cash, you have one just more week to enter.

In addition, every reader who enters the weekly competitions with the correct answer to all three of the hunts will be put into a prize draw, with the winner scooping £20,000 in jewels or cash and a VIP trip to London.

The Treasure Hunt started in Saturday’s Weekend magazine and today’s teaser is printed below – so start thinking!