Giant Summary of Methods and Thoughts thus far.... long.
Jun 9, 2018 17:29:29 GMT -5
Jenny, lookinup, and 1 more like this
Post by nkown on Jun 9, 2018 17:29:29 GMT -5
This is a long post intended to posit a solution method to find the Fenn treasure. I should say, Methods, as there are likely many that need to be woven together in order to unambiguously ‘solve’ the puzzle Mr. Fenn (and likely others! [I’ll get to that below]) have created. A number of seemingly opposing methods are explored on these boards but I haven’t seen anyone blend them together. This will be a not-rigorous overview at best -- there has been a ton written -- and does not include everything I think I’ve found. It’s meant as an idea-set of how someone will eventually find the treasure.
Fenn said that whoever finds the chest will have earned it. That suggests to me a level of complexity, that while straightforward, is not likely to be stumbled upon.
The Nature of Puzzles
It is instructive to look at a number of other treasure hunts and how they were solved in order to wrap our heads around how any human, not just Fenn, thinks about creating a treasure hunt. Here are a few famous ones, but there are many others:
• Masquerade -- a quintessential armchair treasure hunt. Look at this solution: dreamsofgerontius.com/2016/10...-the-solution/
• The Secret by Byron Priess -- This solution may or may not be right, but illustrates the point I will make
www.jennifermoss.com/byron-pr...age-1-verse-7/
• The Merlin Mystery --
dreamsofgerontius.com/2016/11...lution-part-9/
In each of these, and many others throughout the ages, a blending of methods coexist in order to come together to convey hidden but embedded information. At the end of the Fenn treasure hunt we must be left with a precise enough solution that one can confidently go to a spot within the Rocky Mountains -- a giant landscape -- and find the secreted treasure which is physically tiny. Therefore, my first assumption is the Mr. Fenn spent a great deal of time creating this puzzle, just as he says he did. Why would a seemingly simple poem take over a decade to write? Because there is precise information that needs to be embedded, but done so such that thousands of people are likely to completely overlook it.
Ok… so these examples above are all obviously puzzles and here’s the key thing -- they TOLD THE READER UPFRONT that they were puzzle books. Fenn calls TTOTC and the subsequent two books “Memoirs”. Are they? No… I don’t believe they are. The entirety of what Fenn has created is a puzzle of a grand scale. He says he always viewed art -- visual art and sculpture -- as business and not aesthetics. But, he loves the art of language and he’s clearly having a ball watching the hunt unfold. Other writers have simply put out the books and left it go. Mr. Fenn, I believe, had a bigger plan to help it unfold and enjoys engaging in the process.
Nonetheless, what methods has Fenn used within the entirety of his body of works (3 books, interviews, videos, nearly 200 online scrapbooks, weekly questions, posts and comments on blogs, and more)? Here are a few:
Errors / Facts that are wrong:
It is exceptionally clear to me that the 85/15 rule of non-fiction has been pointed out by Fenn early in the TTOTC to let us know that this is certainly a constructed puzzle and in no way his actual memoir (which I believe is in fine print within the TC olive jar). Do some of the stories have a basis in reality? For sure. There is enough of his life in these stories to be accurate to time and place and ideas. But do I think he ever went to Borders book store or that Skippy stranded a plane or made a helicopter? No. At every step along the way the TTOTC has intentional errors and outright fabrications.
The whole body of work is intended as a puzzle.
Yes that means I believe that the SB’s, website from Dal, three books, videos, Q&A’s, and more are all equally viable sources of solutions and methods. I recognize that this puts me at odds with ‘poem purists’ but ask yourself -- would you spend thousands of hours producing more material that was meaningless, or worse a series of red-herrings, to the puzzle… or would it be more interesting to build the solutions and methods over a long period of time (see: SB numbering system below… had to be planned well in advance).
If you are new to the Chase do this… take any statement of fact in TTOTC, the online scrapbooks, the Q&A’s, etc. and check to see if it’s accurate, no matter how benign. As an example nearly every single chapter has easily verified mistakes that have been well documented by the blogs. A few:
Important Literature synopsis of books is wrong, Redford did write a book, quoted aphorism is incorrect and more
Postmarks have incorrect day of week throughout vs. date
Evett’s poem on page 75 is actually Nancy Bird Turner and words have been changed
Omar Khayyam’s poem on page 101 is re-ordered, partial sections of the original. Why change the order of the numbered stanzas?
That’s not the right math for making a horseshoe
Many, many more, a few of which are so subtle (Gardiner’s Island vs. Gardiners Island) that I read over them a dozen times without even recognizing it was something to be checked.
Similarly, the Scrapbooks are littered with more obvious mistakes:
Solstice is wrong date
Misspelled words
Price of art easily verified as incorrect
Fly Fishing errors -- sacrilege!
Literally dozens more...
Mistakes are not errors, and errors are not mistakes. These are the red flags that could be part of the puzzle and must be reconciled into an overall method of solve.
Word / Letter Count
Many armchair hunts utilize some form of this. Frankly, it’s not something I did manually… I used various computer programs to parse the poem and parts of the book and came up empty. And that’s probably because Fenn’s methods were actually both more simple and more subtle -- and required human contextual understanding to be revealed.
Yes, I’m a speaking of OH!’s 109 / 43 posts. I do not believe that all of them are internally valid (he data fits from time to time) but enough are that it seems clear that Fenn is pointing us to those numbers.
Let’s set aside OH!’s further conclusion that they are the start of GPS coordinates for now and just hold the thought that perhaps the word / letter count is a part of the overall solution.
Word Games, Type 1 -- Anagrams, Homonyms, Synonyms:
a) Fenn points out that sometimes a butterfly is a flutterby. (Anagram)
b) He also says that sometimes there is a write way to do something. (Homonym)
c) Using the wrong word altogether in a sentence that seems to make sense.
Throughout his writings Fenn plays with words. In the beginning of TTOTC he lets us know that he “tends to use some words that aren’t in the dictionary, and others that are, I bend a little.” Just after, he mentions a twelve year old seeing a little of themselves in a mirror (more on that later).
A huge number of searchers have parsed the poem using parts of speech, Anagrams and Homonyms. See: Deepthinkr and Rah as the two proponents that I like best.
Since Fenn himself mentions wordplay a great deal this seems another valid method to me that needs to be incorporated. I won’t go through the hundreds of possibilities that have been outlined by others.
Word Games, Type 2 -- aka Fennspeak
Fennspeak is the name that some in the Chase have given to his way of saying things that are intentionally misleading or ambiguous, but could mean something else entirely.
This is the Eats, Shoots & Leaves punctuation method and one that I’m a fan of for the Scrapbooks, Q&A questions, and interviews. I believe these hint at ‘how’ to do things or ‘where, generally’ the treasure may be.
One of my personal favorite examples is one that I haven’t seen written up anywhere, from SB172:
“I wonder if the owners of my home a hundred years from now will appreciate the dichotomy that stands just off the east end of my portal -- f”
Is he talking about his current house where he lives? Or his grave? Punctuation might help clear this up but it has been left intentionally vague.
Again, there are dozens of such examples catalogued. Four of my favorite subtle ones:
Not near a human trail
That if followed precisely…
General solve… he even puts “General” in quotes.
Discharged the explosives… discharged in the military sense?
Maybe a hundred more….
Word Games Type 3 -- Redaction, merging, revealing words
Many searchers have worked on the poem by finding words within words… Listen becomes “L is Ten”. Quest to Cease becomes Quest two C’s.
There are a lot of hidden words within the poem when you explore this method, especially if you are willing to take liberties with spelling (Knowledge vs. Knowlege) as Fenn does. A lot of the theories are interesting, but none have been applied in a way that is consistent and repeatable. Perhaps that’s why the poem requires more hints and clues… perhaps the puzzle is too vague to be solved because the word-play is too imaginative.
In many other armchair puzzles the ‘output’ of the clues or cipher is a combination of words, letters, and numbers that makes sense only when taken together. This could be the case with the poem, and if so it will definitely require more methods of confirmation.
Fenn said that whoever finds the chest will have earned it. That suggests to me a level of complexity, that while straightforward, is not likely to be stumbled upon.
The Nature of Puzzles
It is instructive to look at a number of other treasure hunts and how they were solved in order to wrap our heads around how any human, not just Fenn, thinks about creating a treasure hunt. Here are a few famous ones, but there are many others:
• Masquerade -- a quintessential armchair treasure hunt. Look at this solution: dreamsofgerontius.com/2016/10...-the-solution/
• The Secret by Byron Priess -- This solution may or may not be right, but illustrates the point I will make
www.jennifermoss.com/byron-pr...age-1-verse-7/
• The Merlin Mystery --
dreamsofgerontius.com/2016/11...lution-part-9/
In each of these, and many others throughout the ages, a blending of methods coexist in order to come together to convey hidden but embedded information. At the end of the Fenn treasure hunt we must be left with a precise enough solution that one can confidently go to a spot within the Rocky Mountains -- a giant landscape -- and find the secreted treasure which is physically tiny. Therefore, my first assumption is the Mr. Fenn spent a great deal of time creating this puzzle, just as he says he did. Why would a seemingly simple poem take over a decade to write? Because there is precise information that needs to be embedded, but done so such that thousands of people are likely to completely overlook it.
Ok… so these examples above are all obviously puzzles and here’s the key thing -- they TOLD THE READER UPFRONT that they were puzzle books. Fenn calls TTOTC and the subsequent two books “Memoirs”. Are they? No… I don’t believe they are. The entirety of what Fenn has created is a puzzle of a grand scale. He says he always viewed art -- visual art and sculpture -- as business and not aesthetics. But, he loves the art of language and he’s clearly having a ball watching the hunt unfold. Other writers have simply put out the books and left it go. Mr. Fenn, I believe, had a bigger plan to help it unfold and enjoys engaging in the process.
Nonetheless, what methods has Fenn used within the entirety of his body of works (3 books, interviews, videos, nearly 200 online scrapbooks, weekly questions, posts and comments on blogs, and more)? Here are a few:
Errors / Facts that are wrong:
It is exceptionally clear to me that the 85/15 rule of non-fiction has been pointed out by Fenn early in the TTOTC to let us know that this is certainly a constructed puzzle and in no way his actual memoir (which I believe is in fine print within the TC olive jar). Do some of the stories have a basis in reality? For sure. There is enough of his life in these stories to be accurate to time and place and ideas. But do I think he ever went to Borders book store or that Skippy stranded a plane or made a helicopter? No. At every step along the way the TTOTC has intentional errors and outright fabrications.
The whole body of work is intended as a puzzle.
Yes that means I believe that the SB’s, website from Dal, three books, videos, Q&A’s, and more are all equally viable sources of solutions and methods. I recognize that this puts me at odds with ‘poem purists’ but ask yourself -- would you spend thousands of hours producing more material that was meaningless, or worse a series of red-herrings, to the puzzle… or would it be more interesting to build the solutions and methods over a long period of time (see: SB numbering system below… had to be planned well in advance).
If you are new to the Chase do this… take any statement of fact in TTOTC, the online scrapbooks, the Q&A’s, etc. and check to see if it’s accurate, no matter how benign. As an example nearly every single chapter has easily verified mistakes that have been well documented by the blogs. A few:
Important Literature synopsis of books is wrong, Redford did write a book, quoted aphorism is incorrect and more
Postmarks have incorrect day of week throughout vs. date
Evett’s poem on page 75 is actually Nancy Bird Turner and words have been changed
Omar Khayyam’s poem on page 101 is re-ordered, partial sections of the original. Why change the order of the numbered stanzas?
That’s not the right math for making a horseshoe
Many, many more, a few of which are so subtle (Gardiner’s Island vs. Gardiners Island) that I read over them a dozen times without even recognizing it was something to be checked.
Similarly, the Scrapbooks are littered with more obvious mistakes:
Solstice is wrong date
Misspelled words
Price of art easily verified as incorrect
Fly Fishing errors -- sacrilege!
Literally dozens more...
Mistakes are not errors, and errors are not mistakes. These are the red flags that could be part of the puzzle and must be reconciled into an overall method of solve.
Word / Letter Count
Many armchair hunts utilize some form of this. Frankly, it’s not something I did manually… I used various computer programs to parse the poem and parts of the book and came up empty. And that’s probably because Fenn’s methods were actually both more simple and more subtle -- and required human contextual understanding to be revealed.
Yes, I’m a speaking of OH!’s 109 / 43 posts. I do not believe that all of them are internally valid (he data fits from time to time) but enough are that it seems clear that Fenn is pointing us to those numbers.
Let’s set aside OH!’s further conclusion that they are the start of GPS coordinates for now and just hold the thought that perhaps the word / letter count is a part of the overall solution.
Word Games, Type 1 -- Anagrams, Homonyms, Synonyms:
a) Fenn points out that sometimes a butterfly is a flutterby. (Anagram)
b) He also says that sometimes there is a write way to do something. (Homonym)
c) Using the wrong word altogether in a sentence that seems to make sense.
Throughout his writings Fenn plays with words. In the beginning of TTOTC he lets us know that he “tends to use some words that aren’t in the dictionary, and others that are, I bend a little.” Just after, he mentions a twelve year old seeing a little of themselves in a mirror (more on that later).
A huge number of searchers have parsed the poem using parts of speech, Anagrams and Homonyms. See: Deepthinkr and Rah as the two proponents that I like best.
Since Fenn himself mentions wordplay a great deal this seems another valid method to me that needs to be incorporated. I won’t go through the hundreds of possibilities that have been outlined by others.
Word Games, Type 2 -- aka Fennspeak
Fennspeak is the name that some in the Chase have given to his way of saying things that are intentionally misleading or ambiguous, but could mean something else entirely.
This is the Eats, Shoots & Leaves punctuation method and one that I’m a fan of for the Scrapbooks, Q&A questions, and interviews. I believe these hint at ‘how’ to do things or ‘where, generally’ the treasure may be.
One of my personal favorite examples is one that I haven’t seen written up anywhere, from SB172:
“I wonder if the owners of my home a hundred years from now will appreciate the dichotomy that stands just off the east end of my portal -- f”
Is he talking about his current house where he lives? Or his grave? Punctuation might help clear this up but it has been left intentionally vague.
Again, there are dozens of such examples catalogued. Four of my favorite subtle ones:
Not near a human trail
That if followed precisely…
General solve… he even puts “General” in quotes.
Discharged the explosives… discharged in the military sense?
Maybe a hundred more….
Word Games Type 3 -- Redaction, merging, revealing words
Many searchers have worked on the poem by finding words within words… Listen becomes “L is Ten”. Quest to Cease becomes Quest two C’s.
There are a lot of hidden words within the poem when you explore this method, especially if you are willing to take liberties with spelling (Knowledge vs. Knowlege) as Fenn does. A lot of the theories are interesting, but none have been applied in a way that is consistent and repeatable. Perhaps that’s why the poem requires more hints and clues… perhaps the puzzle is too vague to be solved because the word-play is too imaginative.
In many other armchair puzzles the ‘output’ of the clues or cipher is a combination of words, letters, and numbers that makes sense only when taken together. This could be the case with the poem, and if so it will definitely require more methods of confirmation.
