Here is the
account of how I lost two days playing TreeLoot very
seriously.
The thing is, when you play TreeLoot, you see the coordinates of the pixel you click on in the URL bar of the browser; and after that, you see how close you are of various prizes on a relative scale. I focused on the $25,000 prize (of course) and found three boundary points where the proximity scale would change. This is done by clicking a few dozen of times on the TreeLoot image, each time carefully adjusting the position of the mouse (you can't play by just typing the URL, damn!) and noting the coordinates of the click along with the proximity scale value.
With three such boundary points, it is possible to compute the exact center of the circular zone defined by all pixels at a certain distance of the prize. There is only one circle passing through three points, so that its center HAD to be the prize. My heart pumping wildly, I positioned my mouse over the center pixel and clicked. The results: a proximity scale that was red all the way (I never saw that before!), but no prize. After biting into my arm for about 30 seconds, I searched the FAQ and read that the prize can be anywhere in the circular zone (which covers thousands of pixels), and that the proximity scale just gives the distance to the center of that zone.
Always read the rules before playing...